


Alphabet Soup

by LooNEY_DAC



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2018-09-20 18:20:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 78
Words: 50,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9505088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC
Summary: A collection of one-shots in three series. Series 1 of this collection features titles which start with an indefinite article, “A/An”. Series 2 of this collection features titles which are anarthrous, or “without articles”. Series 3 of this collection features titles which start with the definite article, “The”.





	1. An After-Dinner Chat (Series 1, Part 1)

“So, Mikkel.”

“...”

“Miiiiiikelllllllllllllllll.”

“Mphrm.”

“Mikkel Mikkel MIKKEL Mikkel Mikkel.”

“...Yes?”

“Sorry to bust you out of your mutinist plans, but we need to talk about something.”

“...”

“...”

“...And that _something_ is?”

“The _squirrel_.”

“Ah. That.”

“Yep.”

“...”

“Now, don’t get me wrong: I think it’s great that you’re getting meat for the pot and all, but could you at least _skin_ the next one?”

“If I’m allowed to, certainly.”

“???”

“In any case, I thought you were hoping to run across some more of those deer.”

“Wwwwwwelllllllllllllll...”

“...”

“...I sorta reconsidered that.”

“And what prompted _that_ minor miracle, pray tell?”

“Emil threw up the last time we gutted one.”

“A natural enough response for a city boy seeing his first dressing; I shouldn’t think it’ll happen again, and I see no reason for that to hinder your pursuit of additional provender.”

“Neither would I, except Twigs came over and _glared_ at me with those weird cat eyes he has.”

“Mmm?”

“Well, _you_ may not believe in mages, but _I’ve_ been around enough of ’em to know that you _reallllllllly_ don’t want to be on one’s bad side.”

“I can see that that would be a less-than-desirable circumstance in which to find oneself; however, would not any potential ire be appeased by acclimating our young Swede to the dressing out process and letting his Finn friend see that it no longer bothers him?”

“Not unless we stop somewhere long enough to set up some snares; we probably won’t luck out enough to find another Kastellet on the way to Odense.”

“...”

“...”

“...Would not the snares attract grosslings as well?”

“That’s the _best part_ of setting snares: nabbing a few grosslings clueless enough to go for free meat!”

“Ah.”

“Yep.”

“Do you think Emil will enjoy that any more than the other kills he’s racked up so far?”

“Nah, but he won’t shy away from ’em, either, as his current kill count shows. He knows it’s putting them out of their misery.”

“...”

“?”

“...If you say so.”

“I do, as I know him rather better than you do. He talks to me more than he does to you.”

“Hmmm.”

“You just got off on the wrong foot with him ‘cause you trusted all that rot-gut that was in his files.”

“...Yes. I’m sure it was all _just_ rot-gut.”

“All that ‘scholastic assessment’ stuff doesn’t say _beans_ about how you’ll do under fire--nor have I ever seen one that takes a kind heart into account, or anything else worth anything: just ‘name this’ and ‘date that’, as if _that_ was the end-all be-all of life.”

“Mrh.”

“Besides, if this little trip’s taught me anything, it’s that the Swedes don’t know beans about how to handle a kid like Emil.”

“...Actually, there we agree.”

“Good. And I really hate to think what they’d do if they found someone like Skinny on their hands.”

“The mind boggles.”

“No, the gorge rises, as does the choler. And speaking of rising gorges, can I get a less equivocal answer on the squirrel question?”


	2. Asterisks and Obelisks (Series 2, Part 1)

Emil had to admit, the thing in front of them certainly _looked_ like the picture in the book Sigrun was waving around, no matter _what_ Mikkel said (assuming Emil understood what Mikkel was really saying--always somewhat of a dice-roll). What was _really_ in question, however, was whether that meant what she thought it meant.

From what Emil could make out of the potato-mouthed rumblings, Mikkel was utterly convinced it did not, had never, and would never. Tuuri was unsure, not being very well-versed in these matters. Lalli didn’t care one way or the other. Reynir, as expressed through Tuuri’s translations, was as clueless as ever.

Emil himself was torn. Part of him _wanted_ Sigrun to be totally right in her assertions, while the more cynical and world-weary part knew Mikkel was almost certainly right.

“Look at the asterisk, Sigrun.” Mikkel was pointing at the book Sigrun held.

“The how much?”

Mikkel pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily before continuing. He pointed at the book again. “The _asterisk_ is the name for what you called ‘the little bug-splatter thingy’ next to the picture.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh. So what about it?”

Mikkel sighed again. “It means there’s an explanatory note farther down the page, which is indicated by another asterisk.”

Sigrun pouted. “You mean you want me to read more when we could be checking out this incredible find?”

“It’s just a mock-up made by a bunch of Old-Time lunatics!” Mikkel finally exploded. “It was their version of erecting an obelisk to call down the favor of the sky-gods on their foolhardy endeavors!”

“Wait, I thought you Danes were all atheists?”

“Oh, very well, then: it was their version of erecting an obelisk boasting of their might and prowess to any people that might come and see it!”

Mikkel had been less than enthusiastic about this sortie in the first place, contesting that they should relocate to the heart of the city as planned rather than detouring around the edges, but Sigrun had pointed out that there wasn’t any snow to give them cover to slip into the city, so staying on the industrial fringe was the safe bet for now.

The old folks back at the base had also said that they’d had a special request from a group based out of Nexø, and so the intrepid band had wandered their merry way up from Prøvestenen to Refshaleøen.

There had been quite a bit of eye-catching architecture along the way thus far, but when Tuuri and Sigrun had first set eyes on the rocket the group was now parked in front of, it had completely captured their attention. Emil couldn’t blame them for their fascination, but obviously Mikkel did.

“All their records will have been computerized,” he was protesting now.

Sigrun gestured to the rocket. “Even if the big thing here isn’t real, they’ll have had some test stuff in there! Think of it: the secret of space flight, right at our fingertips!”

“We were sent to retrieve books; we don’t have cargo space for anything else.”

“We’re going inside, at any rate; what kind of warriors would get here only to chicken out of looking it over--right, Emil?”

The Swede had been examining the rocket and ignoring the debate between his two seniors, but he responded gamely, “Absolutely.”

“So you and Short Stuff and Troll-Bait can stay out here while Twigs and Goldie and I check out the good stuff inside. Okay?”

*

With a mighty roar, the rocket climbed into the sky, leaving the burning building below far behind. Mikkel, Tuuri and Reynir watched in awe-struck silence as it ascended, until a series of hideous shrieks brought their attention back to the totally engulfed structure still on the ground.

The door nearest them flung open, and the three explorers emerged, Lalli acting as rear-guard while Emil half-carried Sigrun out.

“I seem to detect a pattern here,” Mikkel rumbled to no one in particular as he assisted them into the vehicle. Snow was beginning to fall, but the cries and shrieks followed them for quite some distance as Tuuri took them away from the site.

*

“So, you didn’t manage to retrieve _anything_ from the site at all?” Disappointment laced Torbjörn’s voice.

“Actually,” Mikkel replied, “we obtained a large quantity of blueprints and design drawings, but no information at all on the fuels side.”

“That... that should be sufficient.” Torbjörn had regained his customary optimism. “Good work!”

Mikkel signed off, muttering to himself about “those fools in Nexø”. They had relocated to the old palace complex of Amalienborg, the weather having kept them from reaching their desired campsite, and Sigrun had decamped with Emil on yet another raid, despite having just been injured in a troll attack.

Sigrun had ignored or discounted Mikkel’s advice at every turn so far; now, he was determined to show her how foolish that was...


	3. The Aforementioned (Series 3, Part 1)

_Extracts from the Official Report of Politibetjent Jacob Meincke on the Disturbance of the Peace at the Vestskoven, Glostrup Municipality, 20 September 2011_ :

At approximately 2217 and as I neared the halfway point of my fourth circuit of my patrol through the Vestskoven, I came upon an illegal campsite based around a most peculiar vehicle, the make and model of which I was unable to determine and which bore no license plate or other identifying markings...

The aforementioned illegal campers numbered six: a Dane, a Swede, a Norwegian, an Icelander, and two Finns. The Norwegian, a tall redheaded woman who identified herself as one “Sigrun Eide of Dalsnes”, was obviously the ringleader, and far and away the loudest of the bunch, though the others enthusiastically violated the local noise ordinances...

After reporting back to the local police detachment via my radio, I walked up to the illegal campers in an attempt to encourage the group to remove the vehicle, strike their campsite and disperse peaceably. The reaction the illegal campers displayed to my appearance strongly suggested that some or all of them were under the influence of controlled or illegal substances, as the Swede, the Dane and the Norwegian seemed positive that I was something other than human...

The aforementioned Norwegian then took it upon herself to threaten me with a large knife...

While the aforementioned Dane restrained the aforementioned Norwegian, the aforementioned Swede and one of the aforementioned Finns drew weapons of their own: the Finn a rather battered bolt-action rifle, and the Swede what appeared to be a flamethrower. It was at this point that I made a tactical retreat and called for reinforcements...

The reinforcements deployed around the illegal campsite in accordance with the established procedures; I was instructed by Politikommissær Olsen to take part in storming the aforementioned campsite once I had been outfitted with the correct tactical gear.

When the storming party approached the illegal campsite, the strange vehicle and its occupants had decamped; only a few bits of wastage and the marks on the ground told of their presence...

Though the cordon was complete and correct, none of the other Politibetjent had witnessed the aforementioned illegal campers’ departure...

The tracks left by the aforementioned peculiar and unidentified vehicle simply stopped approximately seventeen meters from the cordon...

The aforementioned tracks and other disturbances in the soil of the illegal campsite have been verified as freshly made on the night in question...

Politibetjent Wieghorst, to whom I spoke on the radio when requesting reinforcements, has verified that he heard the raucous utterances of the aforementioned illegal campers over the connection...

A number of civilians in the area for recreational purposes have reported hearing the aforementioned raucous utterances on the night in question...

Authorities in the Norwegian village of Dalsnes have confirmed that the only “Sigrun Eide” (née Larsen) in residence was present in Dalsnes on the night in question; furthermore, the aforementioned resident of Dalsnes in no way matches the description I gave of the aforementioned illegal camper calling herself “Sigrun Eide”...

While the aforementioned illegal campers have not been encountered since the night in question, in light of the recent increase in activity by the criminal motorcycle gang “Hells-Angels”, I recommend an increase in patrols through the Vestskoven, especially during the hours of darkness...


	4. A Bestial Thing to Do (Series 1, Part 2)

_The wizened little detective faced down the dozen Seiður assembled around the coffee table. “One of you is a murderer,” he said bluntly. “Poor Olafur, who ate his last meal here at this very table less than two days ago, was murdered, and the sea-wall breach merely a ruse to cover the killer’s tracks!”_

_Voices rose in anger, fear and consternation, but the detective never turned a hair at the commotion. Soon, the group around the table had nearly reached the point of physical violence as everyone present presented each other with airings of every petty little grievance as evidence that there was the murderer._

_All this time, the detective had remained unmoved; nor did he attempt some futile demonstration of physical prowess now. Instead, he raised his own voice again. “This cozy little circle of yours has had everything their own way for so long that most of you think that it’s ‘the natural order of things’, and one of you thought he could get away with murder. Well, you were wrong, Bjarni Einarson!”_

A mass of papers landed on the desk next to Reynir with a loud _thud_ just as he reached the detective’s revelation of the murderer’s identity. Not unnaturally, the hapless Icelander came just shy of breaking his head on the vehicle’s metal roof immediately thereafter.

“Where did you get that pulp trash?” Mikkel asked, nodding at the ragged, flimsy booklet Reynir had almost flung into the big Dane’s face in his surprise.

“My mother wrote it,” Reynir replied, an understandable note of frost coloring his voice. “It’s one of a series she wrote about this little old guy who keeps getting caught up in murders and other mysteries. She wouldn’t let me read them while I was living at home, so I grabbed this one on my way out.”

Mikkel pinched the bridge of his nose and mumbled something about “that accursed Loki Saxet copycat fad” that Reynir didn’t really understand. The big Dane, at his very most _Danish_ , then informed Reynir that the Icelander should vacate the office so that Tuuri could get to work on the papers Mikkel had just delivered.

Reynir saw Tuuri peeping apologetically from behind the great Madsen mass. “Oh--sorry about that, Tuuri.” As he was still twitchy from his earlier startle, it took him a few awkward moments to disentangle his limbs from each other so that he could yield the desk to her.

*

_The murderer stood blocking the only exit, but the wizened little detective remained as calm as though he were chatting about commonplaces in his favorite tea-room instead of facing down an unrepentant murderer._

Reynir swallowed nervously as he read the passage, one hand tightly gripping the wood frame of the bunk he was sitting on. It didn’t help that a thunderstorm had sprung up out of nowhere while he’d been reading in the sleeping quarters, the fierce rattle of the rain against their vehicle adding to the tense atmosphere the prose engendered. He tried petting the kitten ensconced in his lap, but despite the resultant purring, his nerves still thrummed with tension.

_“Whether or not your confounded meddling brings me to grief, your own doom has come.”_

“Your own doom has come!” someone whispered in Reynir’s ear. Not until much later did Reynir realize that Tuuri had crept up to him and read the words over his shoulder; at the moment, he was far too busy panicking.

It took quite some time to coax the kitten down from Reynir’s head, and even longer to set all the bunks to rights...


	5. Beneath the Surface (Series 2, Part 2)

When Sigrun Eide regained consciousness, there was a burlap sack covering her head, and her wrists were bound and pulled above so that she was nearly hanging from them.

Less than two minutes later, Sigrun was chafing her wrists and complaining to herself about the toll her advancing years were taking on her: a dozen years ago, she’d have been out in under _one_ minute, even fighting off grosslings!

Well, even with her encroaching decrepitude, she was still going to rip through whoever was responsible for this like a sword through cobwebs. Of course, she needed to find them first, which meant reconnaissance.

Sigrun was in an open stall in an Old Time stable block, as her abductors apparently had been fool enough to think that binding her as they had would be sufficient to hold her. Regardless, it would be wise to explore the rest of the stalls before moving on.

Sigrun had explored one row of stalls and was just turning down another when she heard a noise. It was hardly necessary to guess whence it had originated: one of the stalls ahead of her was shut, so she slipped up to it and kicked the door open.

The boy looking back at her with wide blue eyes had the most beautiful hair Sigrun had ever seen on anyone, male or female; the perfectly coiffed locks were golden and even seemed to sparkle in the wan and scant sunlight. It almost distracted her from the knife he was shakily holding in a keep-away-from-me-you-crazy-woman way. Sigrun had seen that particular hold a _lot_ in Dalsnes.

Sigrun sighed. “You know, kid, a Hunter captain like me wouldn’t even pause at the way you’re holding your knife, and _certainly_ a grossling wouldn’t either.”

The boy straightened, lowering his knife. “You’re a Norwegian,” he stated in somewhat snooty Swedish.

“And you’re a Swede,” Sigrun replied. “May I presume you woke up wearing one of these--” she brandished the sack she’d brought with her “--too?”

He pulled out his own sack from behind his back, lowering his knife. “Are you really a Hunter captain?”

“Just the most best one in Dalsnes,” Sigrun answered proudly.

This seemed to satisfy the boy, who stiffened to attention. “Cleanser Emil Västerström, Svenstavik Detachment, Fourth Cohort, Northern Front, Ma’am.”

“At ease, Little Viking,” Sigrun said with a grin. “Sigrun Eide, Hunter captain--but call me Sigrun; everyone does.” Then her smile faded. “Have you seen anyone else yet?”

The boy shook his head. “I’d just freed myself when I heard you coming and shut myself in here.”

“Well, searching should go easier with the two of us.” The boy’s eyes widened at something behind her as she said this, so she spun around--

“The three of us?” the big blond Dane said hopefully, holding a sack of his own out like a peace offering.

Sigrun nodded. “The three of us, then.”

“My name is Mikkel Madsen. With whom do I have the honor of collaborating?”

“What did he say?” Emil asked quietly.

“Sigrun Eide,” Sigrun said. “The Swede’s Emil Västerström.”

“Under different circumstances, I would count it a pleasure to meet you both, but as it stands...”

A rather timid voice called out from further along the row of stalls, “Um, hi there?” in faltering Swedish.

The speaker was a short and somewhat chunky girl with a young face and gray-blond hair. She also had a sack in one hand that matched the others. “I’m Tuuri Hotakainen, and I’m a skald from Keuruu, in Finland--”

Tuuri suddenly looked up at the rafters. “Lalli, get _down_ from there! You were the one who said they weren’t going to hurt us!” Of course, she said this in Finnish, so Lalli was the only one who understood her.

The others all looked where Tuuri was looking, but only Emil managed to spot the thin figure with the same color hair as Tuuri lurking among the heavy wooden beams before it leapt out and down into Mikkel’s arms.

“That’s my cousin, Lalli Hotakainen,” Tuuri explained. “He only speaks Finnish. He’s a night scout, so he can be a little... _odd_ at times, and he’s extremely annoyed right now that whoever did this to us managed to get him, too.”

“Tell him to join the club,” Sigrun growled.

An interrogative gargle came from the front of the stables. All their heads turned. “Icelandic?” Mikkel rumbled, and Tuuri nodded.

Mikkel boomed out something, and a moment later, a tall gangly boy with a truly remarkable red braid stepped into their aisle. He was also holding yet another burlap sack.

After a moment, the Icelander gestured for them to follow and began walking out of the stables. With nothing better in the offing, the other five followed him.

The stable had obviously been built by a madman, since no one else would choose to build anything on the rim of a volcanic crater. Not particularly surprisingly, there seemed to be no roads or even tracks from the stable out of the cone.

After a few moments of gaping, the others turned to the Icelander. A lengthy and repetitive conversation ensued, culminating in Sigrun asking, “ _Iceland?_ How in the Nine Worlds did we end up in _Iceland?_ ”

When the question was asked of him, the red-headed Icelander expressed his own befuddlement in a series of demonstrative shrugs, then spat out another bunch of gobbledygook.

“He says that the only thing that he knows for sure is that the tracks lead deeper into the crater. If we want to find whoever did this to us, that’s our best shot.” Tuuri asked her cousin something, nodding at his reply. “Lalli backs him up.”

“Well, then.” Sigrun squared her shoulders. “Shall we?”


	6. The Boy Who Would Be Emil (Series 3, Part 2)

The boy had first seen The Poster when he was nine, and when he looked back after years upon years had gone by, he could see that it had become a strange sort of dividing line in his life: there was Before The Poster and there was After The Poster, and that was that. Before, he’d been like any other boy of his age, neither knowing nor caring what his grownup life would be. After, there had been no question about what he was going to be when he grew up.

Four and a half years After The Poster, he was admitted into the Cleansers; six months after _that_ , he was out in the field, and just in time. That was the year that would forever be remembered as “The Year of the Trolls”, and he and his confreres each nearly died a dozen or more times over at the grosslings’ rapacious hands.

Most of them survived, though, and it was all due to the Icon.

The Icon had been called back to the front after years of helping Sweden’s best and brightest realize that the Cleansers were the bright shining future of Sweden; his return to those who needed his inspiration most had been none too soon.

It must have pained the Icon to realize that the trainers had failed him so badly, but he wasted no time in his campaign to make True Cleansers of his cohort. The boy and his confreres found themselves being mercilessly drilled, often until they could barely stand afterwards; but none complained, as they knew that with every pass through the Manual of Arms, a grossling was less and less likely to prevail against them; and fewer and fewer did.

The boy was standing watch one night when it happened. He and his watch partner were jawing back and forth, just like always, and suddenly the Icon was with them.

They almost shot him, but that was the part the Icon liked best about the whole thing: while they’d failed to notice his approach, they’d been ready to take him down once they spotted him. The Icon remonstrated with them for not catching his approach (“Had I been a troll, I could have slaughtered you”), but forbore any official punishment, and even stayed with them for the rest of their watch.

The boy had been reluctant to speak at first, but eventually he asked what he thought was a fairly straightforward and simple question about the Mission. The Icon slowly examined the boy, his expression unreadable, but the boy didn’t withdraw the question. The Icon changed the subject, and the boy let it drop.

The watch finally ended, and they all went their separate ways. The boy’s nerves finally stopped jangling over the incident a week or so later, when the entire cohort was locked in a life-or-death struggle with a new flood of grosslings. A month later, the boy had nearly forgotten that it had ever happened.

As it turned out, though, the Icon had not forgotten. As soon as the word went out that they were to go on an expedition to Karlstad, the boy was summoned to the headquarters.

The boy was ushered to stand before the Icon’s desk. “I find I have need of a number of new aides-de-camp, and you are to be one of them,” the Icon told the boy. “You will report to my chief of staff in the morning. Dismissed.”

After that, things happened so fast, the boy wasn’t sure when he had time to breathe. He was only a junior aide for a month or so before being seconded to a combat unit as an officer cadet; after another month, he was back as a senior aide to the Icon; then, back to the lines as a combat officer, right as the Karlstad Triumph was taking shape.

Again, when the boy looked back on it all as a man, he saw that the Icon had seen something in him that night, and given him the opportunity to make that something into what the Icon and the Cleansers needed him to be. And there were others, as well; they numbered perhaps a dozen, all told: a rotating roster of aides who tried out combat for size and succeeded or failed as their talents allowed.

Then all was still again, as Winter graced Sweden with its chill reprieve. The Icon went over to the training command and utterly Cleansed it, setting the stage for the rise of his son, the Genius, in but a few years’ time.

The boy would have accompanied the Icon in a heartbeat, but those who had been his aides and “favorites” soon were scattered to the winds, for the most part settling into oddly influential positions across the Cleanser organization.

It was several years later that the boy found that his unit was to be part of the Genius’ Grand Scheme to Cleanse more land than had been Cleansed in Sweden to date. Part of this entailed a visit by the Genius, where he “patiently” explained (as if they had only the meanest intelligences) precisely what their unit would do. Before the Genius was quite finished condescending to them, the boy had dared to ask a pointed but pertinent question, which resulted in the Genius giving the boy a Look quite astonishingly like the one the Icon had given the boy a few years earlier.

“You were one of my father’s aides at Karlstad,” the Genius stated rather than asked. “Well, at least I know _you_ can understand your part in this plan.” He then ended the briefing.

The Grand Scheme succeeded in its aims, of course. One of the most annoying things about the Genius was how he always succeeded in doing the seemingly impossible. But there were still losses even in the greatest success: the boy was crippled.

The boy was contemplating the wreck of his future when he received a letter in a familiar hand...


	7. A Change of Heart (Series 1, Part 3)

Many are the things unknown even to the Wise, though rumor and legend of them have come creeping into the fringes of the Tales the Red Book has passed down.

It is said by some that the Istari were five in number; others say that those five were only their chiefs. It is known only that more came to Middle-Earth than the three who are named in the Red Book; that is, Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast.

It is said that the unnamed Istari were two, and that they were known only as the Blue Wizards, and that they went into the East with Saruman, never to return.

Of course, it is also said, by the unlearned and the foolish, that the War of the Ring was the first time that the wider world became aware of Hobbits and the Shire; but such is not the case, as is shown by the statement in the Red Book that Théoden King of Rohan recognized Merry and Pippin for Halflings.

This is a tale of the Early Times of the Shire, and times even earlier, for the Istari were masters of many subtilties.

*

The Shire was not a century old when this tale begins, but certainly the Hobbits who lived there were already well-ensconced in their habits and patterns of living. Certainly the Pesky-Doors, a Harfoot family living along the banks of the Brandywine, had done so, though the Great Plague had cut their number to three.

Onni was one of the Borderers, and what he’d seen in that service had only confirmed his conviction that he and his should never have anything to do with the wider world. His sister Tuuri held a completely opposite conviction, wanting to go and see as much of the world as a Hobbit could; Onni attributed this to a long-ago mingling of their line with the Fallohide ilk.

Lalli, their only close cousin, was not privy to this difference of opinion, as he was one of the few Hobbits to be accepted into the ranks of the Rangers of the Army of Arthedain, and he was much occupied with his attendant duties. So when his cousin Tuuri told him that they would soon be off on a great adventure, he thought it no more than one of her weird jokes that he never understood.

When the Blue Wizard came to collect Tuuri and Lalli, Lalli was completely caught off guard. “I serve the Royal Sword,” he protested, and was shown an order attaching him to the Wizard’s foray. Fortunately, the Wizard seemed to expect this of him, and was not angered. Indeed, the Wizard did not take Onni’s blistering refusal to accompany them amiss, and the three of them set off for Bree in high spirits (aside from the wain-sick Lalli).

It was in Bree that they were to join the first of the Men who would accompany them, a golden-haired youth named Emil.

*

Emil Dúnduin was the son of the Last Warden of Orthanc, the Deserter who fled the Great Plague, and Emil felt the shame of it down to the depths of his soul. Though the King had forborne to punish the Warden’s family (for the Warden was, in truth, only one of many who had fled and would not return), His Majesty had made another of his vassals Lord of Angrenost in the Warden’s stead.

When the Wizard offered Emil the chance to redeem his family’s honor, there was simply no choice to be made.

*

So did two Hobbits, a Wizard and a Man meet at Bree. Emil was so anxious to make a good first impression that he spilled his food all down the front of his shirt, but only Lalli was interested in seeing him repeat it.

They joined a caravan of Dwarves bound for Moria, as they were to meet the other members of the Wizard’s company in the Pass of Caradhras, and on the first night, they were attacked by a small dragon.

Emil proved his valor, rather unintentionally, by protecting Lalli against the Wyrm’s assaults until it lost interest and flew off.

Tuuri was a bit less enthusiastic about the venture in the days that followed, but they reached the Pass unscathed.

*

The term “giant Dwarf” is held to be an oxymoron, but it still best described Mikkel.

Mikkel Foundling Son of Man had been found as a babe in an Orc encampment set upon and destroyed by Dwarves of Moria; no other Men were anywhere near, so he was an enigma. A Dwarven woman, unmarried despite her age, took the foundling in as hers; yet she could not make the Man a Dwarf, and so the Dwarves held him apart.

In the end, his foster mother had been forced to yield him up to be banished from the mines and into the world of the Men who were his supposed kindred once he had reached his full growth and strength, though she faded and went to the Halls of Aulë within a year.

Mikkel was wandering the Misty Mountains in search of those from whom he had been stolen when the Wizard found him.

*

Sigrun of the Haladin was not a particularly philosophical person; such considerations and concerns were for others, while hers was to fight. This was well, for by dint of her single-minded martial focus, she had been chosen as one of the Haladin Guard, a fate more than she had ever dared to hope for from life.

An Amazon of the Haladin Guard lived and died by the command of her Chieftainess; when Sigrun’s Chieftainess came to her bringing the Wizard and commanding Sigrun to his service, Sigrun simply nodded.

What followed has never been fully explained. Only this is known: Sigrun of the Haladin Guard passed out of knowledge in the First Age, only to return to the tales of the West in the Third Age, when she met with Mikkel at the Pass of Caradhras...


	8. Catharsis (Series 2, Part 3)

The strangest things can change the fate of nations; so it is in this tale.

For some reason that history and even legend have forgotten, Emil Dúnduin was raised speaking Sindarin; he knew neither Quenya, nor even the Common Speech. Of course, Sigrun came from a time before the Common Speech existed (the Folk of Haleth not even speaking a similar tongue to the other Houses of the Edain), so it was good that she spoke oddly accented and slightly archaic Sindarin; and Mikkel spoke both Quenya and even more heavily accented Sindarin, but neither the Common Speech nor the secret language of the Dwarves, as those close and suspicious folk would not let even one fostered among them learn that greatest of their secrets.

So it was that only Tuuri and Lalli (and the Wizard; but Wizards are rather expected to know every tongue in Middle-Earth) spoke Westron of the Westron expedition into the East; fortunately, Tuuri also spoke Sindarin and Quenya; unfortunately, Lalli spoke neither.

*

Reynir Half-Elven was the youngest of his kin, and the only “natural” (though most said “accidental”) son of his parents, who had taken in war orphans from Thranduil’s realm before Reynir’s advent. Also, Reynir was red-haired, a “gift” from his human father. This was why Reynir had ever been made to tend the flocks.

One day, Reynir caught sight of the Lonely Mountain in the distance, and something within him snapped. That night, he fled from the home in which he had been raised, heading for the wide world that awaited him.

He had some vague idea of going to Greenwood the Great, the realm of Thranduil whence his brothers and sisters had come, but ran into a Dwarven caravan instead. He thought they were headed to ancient Dwarrowdelf, when they had actually come from that place, and were headed toward the Eastern Sea.

This was a time when Dwarves and Elves were still close in friendship, so the caravan gladly took Reynir along.

*

“Make for the Eastern Sea; there I shall meet you when my own tasks are complete.” So saying, the Blue Wizard vanished.

“You know,” Sigrun said, “for a leader, he isn’t one to really _lead_ , if you get my drift.”

Mikkel hummed before replying, “Yes, I’ve noticed your-- _dissatisfaction_ , shall we say?--with his shepherding of our group.”

“What did he say?” Tuuri whispered to Emil, who shrugged in perplexity.

“Dissatisfaction is rather a more paltry word than I would have used,” Sigrun replied. “But the Wizard is gone, and we must have a leader.”

“I think we were all rather assuming that the Wizard meant _you_ for that task,” Emil said, before Mikkel could reply.

“Oh, good,” Sigrun said. “I won’t have to hurt anyone to make that official. Well, then, Short Stuff: let’s go!”

Tuuri set their wain in motion, heedless of how Lalli lurched over one side. Emil was not nearly so uncaring, though he hid it behind revulsion.

*

“Sigrun!” Tuuri yelped at the devastation spread across the road. Charred wains of odd design blocked their path in a panoply of death.

“Dragon’s work,” Sigrun opined.

“Wonderful,” Emil groaned, remembering how useless he’d been in his sole encounter with a dragon thus far.

“Oh, it’ll be long gone,” Sigrun assured him. “But we might as well see if it left anything useful behind while we’re clearing the road.”

“And burying the unfortunates the dragon left behind,” Mikkel rumbled, prompting Sigrun and Emil to give him “Well, _duh_ ” looks, Emil actually having understood the mumbling for once.

*

Emil was rummaging through one of the wains while Lalli stared at it suspiciously when a chest popped open and an Elf hopped out. The shriek of surprise this prompted brought Sigrun and Mikkel running, which proved fortunate enough.

Reynir Half-Elven looked at the short, golden-haired Man-youth in perplexity. While Reynir spoke only Quenya, the Man-youth seemed to speak only what Reynir assumed was Sindarin, so neither could understand the other. Fortunately, the gargantuan Dwarven-Man who came over spoke Quenya very well, though his tidings were all bad.

Not only was the caravan destroyed and all the Dwarves dead, but they had been headed in completely the wrong direction, and the group who had rescued him were also bound in that direction, so there was no way he was going else but with them.

Sigrun was not happy about this at all.

*

Emil looked at Lalli in a way that the Hobbit Ranger couldn’t quite decipher. Finally, the young Man reluctantly said, “I have had a dream that has come to me every night since I was but a babe in arms. This dream is one of sorrow, loneliness and pain, and you have always featured in it, Lalli. In this dream, I am an Elf, as I have long yearned to be, while you are an Orc; but the two of us are still friends, despite that, while the world is utterly empty of both of our kinds. Is this phantasm not strange above all others?”

Tuuri was so stunned by this discourse that she had to be prodded into translating for Lalli, and translating Lalli’s response.

“Dreams are both weird and maddeningly perverse, as some are portents, while others are utterly meaningless. Were the Wizard here, he might be able to tell us which your dream is.”

Emil snorted. “Assuming he said anything at all.”

“Perhaps my silence has been from lack of need to say things when nothing need be said,” the Wizard said from behind Emil...


	9. The Cat in Scout’s Clothing (Series 3, Part 3)

Once, there was a cat that watched the scouts every night as they went out and about their duties. Light or dark, wet or dry, hot or cold, they went, and the cat watched all the while.

After a time, the cat told himself, “You know, I do believe I could do that as well as any of those humans do, if I wanted to.” But he didn’t want to, so the cat just stayed where he was.

Over the next while, the cat told himself several more times that he could go a-scouting just as well as any of the humans he watched, if he wanted to; but he never wanted to, so he didn’t.

Finally, one night the cat said it aloud, where he thought no one would hear him.

“I don’t believe you.” So said a young fox lazily lounging in a nearby tree. “You didn’t spot _me_ , so how can you say that you’d be as good as the humans?”

“I would so,” the cat protested, “and I _totally_ knew you were there!”

“Then prove it,” the puppy-fox sneered. “Unless you’re all talk.”

“OK.”

So the cat went to the master of scouts and told him that he wanted to join the scouts.

“Well,” the master of scouts said doubtfully, “you’re a fine, big cat, but all my scouts have to be human.”

“Why?” the cat demanded angrily.

“The good townspeople made us these uniforms, and it would be insulting if we didn’t use them.” The master of scouts held out one of the uniforms for the cat to examine.

The uniforms included long boots that came up over the knees, and long gloves that reached past the elbows. The cat looked at them dubiously.

Eventually, the cat asked, “If I wear the uniform, can I join the scouts?”

“You’ll have to try out first,” the master of scouts replied. “That’s the way it’s done.”

“OK.”

So the cat strained and struggled and finally managed to get into the uniform. It made his balance all wobbly, though, so when he tried out for the scouts, the others just laughed at his efforts to get through their obstacle course.

This only made the cat more determined than ever to show the others that he could be the most best of them all; so every night after that, instead of watching the scouts, the cat practiced.

After a very long time, the cat went back to the master of scouts, who told him, “You already failed your try-out, so I can’t let you join; those are the rules.” But the master of scouts agreed to let the cat try again in front of the town leaders, to see if they might change their minds.

This time, the cat did everything right; he even set a new speed record going through the obstacle course. The town leaders did not want to change their minds, though, because that would mean admitting that they had been wrong.

While the town leaders were busy deciding not to do anything, the cat scouted out the entire town and drew out a map showing where everyone and everything was. This was something not even the best of the other scouts could do, and the master of scouts was both pleased and impressed.

The town leaders still would not budge, so the cat would not become one of their scouts.

“I’ll take him on as a Cub Scout.”

The town leaders gasped, for the speaker was none other than the feared Bear Warrior, Sigrun, the fiercest Bear Warrior ever ever ever!

“Right, Mikkel?” she said, turning to her massive Bear Warrior companion.

“M’yes. This cat could prove most useful as our Cub Scout.”

And that’s how Lalli the cat became a Cub Scout and the Third Bear Warrior...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a prequel to [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8665327).


	10. A Dynamic Encounter (Series 1, Part 4)

There was no warning that the world was about to change; it just did while they slept, twisting from a green and Silent world to an utterly empty desert. They only saw this through their vehicle’s windshield, however, as Lalli, suddenly awake once more, physically blocked the exits until the rest of the group could see how the world had changed.

They had finally come to rest after their wild flight out of Copenhagen in a broad, open, but quite marshy field surrounded rather distantly by trees on most every side. In the deeper background, there were buildings that suggested this area had once been farmlands.

The camp had been pitched (as it were) in haste, but the exhausted crew had still managed to drag a camouflaging cover over the bulk of their vehicle.

The scene outside as dawn broke was utterly different. Instead of a marshy field riddled with ponds and thoroughly green with the gone-to-seed-for-ninety-years vegetation of Silent Denmark, their vehicle rested on a slab of bare rock surrounded by a barren mix of rock and sand, with not a scrap of verdure in sight as far as could be seen.

Lalli had lost his luonto, but the great shift had sent it flying back to him rather than driving it further away, though Lalli thought he’d seen a hint of a red tail vanishing into the distant depths of the dreamworld as Lalli and Lynx reunited.

The first attack was not long after that, before they had even decided on what they should do. It was a quick fusillade of shots followed by a determined pounding on the main door.

“Why aren’t they shooting at the windows?” Sigrun wondered.

After a final shot, the pounding ceased. A long and heavy silence ensued.

“Let’s try the radio,” Tuuri eventually suggested in a quiet and shaky voice, so they did. The results were even more frightening than the attack: instead of the usual screaming interference from the local trolls, there was only a mild static, with no response from anyone, regardless of what tricks Tuuri and Mikkel tried.

It was hours before any of them dared to go out of the vehicle.

*

In the distance, right about where Copenhagen ought to be, rose a gargantuan assemblage of towers that glittered and shone as the sun moved in its arc across the sky.

Sigrun thought they needed to make a sortie at it, but she was persuaded to wait until Lalli had scouted the immediate area out before they went at it.

What Lalli found was disturbing, to say the least. The area looked flat, but there were wrinkles enough nearby to conceal dozens or even hundreds of vehicles just like theirs, all of them empty, cold, and abandoned. Near a few, several crude graves had been dug into the sand; some of these had been emptied shortly thereafter.

The area still seemed to roughly correspond with their old-time maps, enabling Lalli to have Tuuri mark every last spot where he’d found another vehicle, with special notations to designate the graves. Whoever they had been in life, they should be remembered in death, all of the six agreed.

None of them knew what it all meant, but when they finally crept into what should have been Copenhagen, they would find out...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a crossover with H. Beam Piper's Paratime series, and will be followed up later.


	11. Deus Ex Mikkeli (Series 2, Part 4)

Tuuri Hotakainen and Reynir Árnason only survived because they were making out in the aid station supply closet when the attack happened.

They weren’t even supposed to be in that area, as they weren’t immune; Reynir’s own aid station and Tuuri’s workshop were both in the area set aside for the non-immune at the center of the camp.

Lalli Hotakainen and Emil Västerström had been assigned to guard the aid station in general and medic Mikkel Madsen in particular as a punishment; now, it seemed the punishment would prove their salvation. The two boys picked off troll after troll while Mikkel struggled futilely to save as many of the wounded flooding the aid station as he could.

Captain Sigrun Eide fought her way over to the aid station with one of the last of the wounded to reach that place: the idiot Major who’d spoken so boastfully of “the glorious victory that shall soon fall into our hands” just that morning.

Sigrun, Mikkel, Emil, Lalli, Tuuri and Reynir were the only ones who lived through the night.

*

The reclaiming of Mikkeli was to be an international affair: Sweden sent Cleansers; Norway sent Hunters; and Denmark and Iceland sent support troops (mostly medics). Finland supplied the bulk of the force, including as many mages as they could spare.

A minor scandal occurred when it was discovered that one of the Icelanders was a stowaway. Reynir told Tuuri all about it over dinner that night, in the communal dining area in the compound the non-immunes had to share.

“I almost did something like that myself,” he’d confessed, explaining how he’d almost signed on as part of a freighter’s crew before learning the Icelandic military’s medical services would accept him without his having to lie about his non-immune status.

The morning before the Cleansers were to go out in their first foray, there was a mass meeting in the immune area, where the major commanding the Cleansers had blathered a bunch of sententious bromides that he obviously thought would inspire his Cleansers to “great heights of glory” (one of his favorite phrases) in the days to come.

Everything was set up for what was expected on the following day: the aid stations were manned and equipped; the scouts were ready to probe the depths of the nearby city that night; the Hunters were primed to go after the grosslings outside the preliminary Burn Zone; and the Cleansers had laid their plans and checked and double-checked their equipment.

When the grosslings attacked the encampment at high noon, to say the expedition was caught off guard would be a masterpiece of understatement.

Defying all expectations, the grosslings burst out of the ground, and only the aid stations with their concrete floors were spared in the initial assault.

By the evening, it was all over.

*

“Our only hope is to reach Keuruu.”

When Tuuri translated her cousin’s bald assessment of their predicament to the others (Mikkel simultaneously retranslating to Reynir), Sigrun, their leader both _de jure_ and _de facto_ , nodded grimly. “We need to move before the grosslings realize they missed us. Are we all fit to move?”

“Marching through the Silent World without the kind of protection we can’t carry on our backs is a recipe for suicide; I suggest we see if any of the vehicles are still working,” Mikkel said.

*

“It looks like a cat,” Lalli opined.

“Well, whatever it looks like, it’s what we’ve got,” Tuuri replied.

“OK, Short Stuff!” Sigrun enthused as they piled into the vehicle. “Off to Keuruu!” And with a whine and a whir, they were off, but very slowly...


	12. The Dawn Can Come Too Late (Series 3, Part 4)

Throughout human history, the dawn has brought safety and respite from the terrors lurking in the night. Even before the Year Zero, this was true, but as the grosslings came after the few survivors of the outbreak, it became more and more undeniable that the light of the sun had its own special power against the encroaching creatures of darkness.

But even as the First Rule was not a sure defense against a grossling attack, neither was the dawn.

Marten lowered his chisel momentarily in order to wipe the sweat from his brow. He had engraved a mere thirty names so far, and there were hundreds yet to go. Most were the names of strangers, but for even such a virtual shut-in as Marten had been, there were a few names he had carved--and a few he still needed to carve--that were achingly familiar.

There were names from Rønne, names from Nexø, names from every other bit of Bornholm, and even names from the settlements on the few Cleansed Islands; no part of the Remnant of Denmark had escaped loss in what was supposed to have been their greatest triumph.

The worst part was the complete lack of divulgence on the part of the Armed Forces on any aspect of the Kastrup Disaster: it amounted to a total blackout, with even the few survivors unwilling to say anything about that horrible day. The cloud of failure that hovered over their heads tainted everyone around them, as though the Danes as a whole had been shown to be unworthy of their survival, though even that had not been easy.

Marten carved a name or two more before climbing down to get some water. The tunnel was stuffy and humid, which the heat turned to rank and stifling. While the Old Time builders had built it well, their heirs had failed to maintain their works well enough for the tunnel to be bearable for any length of time in summer; and why should they, some among them asked, when the tunnel led only to death, and especially as the year waxed hot--though this was merely an excuse, and everyone knew as much.

That in itself might have warned the wise that what was really lacking in the Danes was the vigor of their forebears: over the years, the old indefatigability had slowly devolved into an unwillingness to put forth the requisite effort to do something the proper way when such effort exceeded their inborn sloth; so even the concept of the proper way itself had devolved into a blind adherence to protocol in order that the Sons of Bornholm might be spared the necessity of the ardor of critical thought to prompt proper and vigorous action.

The Danes were deep in a night of their own making, now more than ever after Kastrup; the question was whether a new dawn could come for them that would awaken them to renewed vigor and perseverance.

And if or when this new dawn came, would it be too late?

Marten sighed and picked up his chisel, leaving aside his gloomy reflections to get back to the work that needed to be done...


	13. An Early Error Is not Easily Rectified (Series 1, Part 5)

_“You know... I’d have_ questions. _About that... stuff. But I don’t know_ what _to ask, so it doesn’t matter that you wouldn’t understand my question. And I wouldn’t understand your answer.”_

The words came back to Mikkel at the oddest times, which was odd, as they hadn’t even been _directed_ at him. He’d only heard them because he’d suggested that the repair crew (currently Tuuri and himself) working on fixing the damage the troll attack had caused should take the occasion of Emil’s departure to have a quick break to restore their (Tuuri’s) equanimity, and so he’d stepped away so Tuuri could do so, which had brought him into earshot of Emil’s remarks to Lalli.

Regardless of where they’d originally been directed, however, the statements disturbed something in Mikkel. It was really quite irksome, the most irksome part being Mikkel’s inability (for the moment) to discern exactly _why_ he was so disturbed.

When enlightenment came, it hit Mikkel like a bombshell: Emil’s statement was mature, humble, and wise.

This did not comport in the least with Mikkel’s prior assessments of Emil.

Sigrun had presented Mikkel with a similar conundrum in the encounter with the sjødraug, acting in a reasonable and levelheaded way that Mikkel would not have thought was within her capacity.

The word “self-doubt” was one Mikkel held as a virtue--for other and supposedly “lesser” people than himself. While he liked to consider himself open-minded, the great bulk of his knowledge, ideas and conclusions were utterly certain in his eyes, so why should he even consider doubting them, or himself for holding them as such?

Two misjudgments of character in a row might be just cause, though, even aside from the Event Mikkel was constantly trying not to think about.

Perhaps this could be attributed to the whole ‘Eric Affair’ and its fall-out; certainly, everyone else (excluding Reynir, of course, as he hadn’t joined them until after that point) was still feeling the effects of that horrible business, so why shouldn’t Emil have used the occasion to do some growing-up?

Eric. Now _there_ was someone Mikkel had decidedly _not_ misjudged, even if the Stingy Quartet (as Mikkel called them whenever he had to clean up a mess caused by their stinginess) _had_.

Had ‘Eric Smed’ even been his real name? Somehow Mikkel doubted it.

But all this remembrance was just so much diversion from what Mikkel should be contemplating, hard and/or painful though it may be: his possible misjudgment of Emil, and what that might mean for the mission, the team, and Mikkel personally. The healthy mind liked pulling such tricks so that it _stayed_ healthy.

Could it be that Emil only acted mature around certain people? His interactions with Lalli, as contrasted with those he had with Mikkel, seemed to argue in favor of this.

Could it be that some people tended to bring what maturity Emil possessed to the fore? Lalli fit the bill here again, with Sigrun (for all her own faults) another possibility.

Could it be that some people--like Mikkel himself--actually caused Emil to act more childishly?

Mikkel winced. The last possibility was all too likely.

What did this mean for the crew, though?

A sharp, acrid smell hit Mikkel’s nostrils, reminding him that he needed to keep stirring the stew that was to be their dinner. Well, hopefully a burnt dinner would be the only consequence of Mikkel’s misjudgment...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, look. It’s [Eric](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8749576/chapters/20058100). [Again](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8749726/chapters/20058472).
> 
> I’m guessing none of you are surprised.


	14. Entranced (Series 2, Part 5)

_The calico kitten pattered its way through the ash-filled battlefield to the thin figure of the quiet Finn. At least this human wouldn’t yell at her. She greeted him with a soft “Prh” before moving to rub herself against his legs._

_At her greeting, Lalli grumbled, “...Stupid useless thing.” Then, moving like a tired old man, he reached down and picked the kitten up, holding her but a moment before plunging his face into her neck in silent weeping._

Lalli Pesky-Door blinked and shook himself. What on earth had that been? He looked at the others.

_The bitter taste of failure filled Sigrun’s mouth, and in a futile attempt to spit it out, she let her tongue lash out at all nearby. Blasted mutinist medic had to keep reminding her how she’d failed to protect her own by letting herself be hobbled by her injuries; blasted little Swede had to be right about standing up to her when she tried to bluster her way into taking over his job; blasted cat had to run away from her leader!_

Sigrun of the Folk of Haleth was staring at nothing; were she anyone else, Lalli would have thought her near tears.

_Reynir felt grief clogging his throat until he nearly couldn’t breathe. It was all his fault: if he hadn’t hidden in the tuna crate, Sigrun wouldn’t have been injured, so the troll wouldn’t have gotten by her, and_ Tuuri would be alright. _This basic truth--that he was useless at best, and the cause of someone’s death at worst--just kept gnawing at him during the endless stretches when he had time to think. Helplessness and a crushing regret filled the void the gnawing left in its wake._

_He spent most of the last stretch almost upside-down against the bunks. He’d heard such a position could be fatal if held too long; he wasn’t sure if that was what he was hoping for from it or not._

Reynir knew what he was experiencing was an illusion, but down beneath the superficial _means_ of his experiencing was a fundamental feeling of reality to the whole. It was as though what he was experiencing was in fact real, just not in the here-and-now; so more a vision than an illusion.

_Mikkel scanned the roiling surface for any sign of a red head about to breach, the last few times it had and the sjødraug’s near-instant and smothering response replaying gloomily in his mind. Sigrun had sounded like she didn’t expect to prevail in this battle; had she been right, or was there any hope left?_

_Emil watched the forest burn from afar, the knowledge that his fellows thought him unworthy to join them eating at him like the acid in a fuse. He had expected to find an acceptance in the Cleansers that had been lacking in the public schools; instead, he had found more of the same snide put-downs, arcane social structures and judgmentalism that had been his lot to be on the receiving end of since his family’s fall from grace. It would never end, then; he had been summed up and comprehensively rejected by what was supposed to have been the most accepting group in Sweden, so what hope was there for him now?_

_Tuuri had never expected to feel_ quite _like this about maybe being infected._

_What was the most unexpected but truly unbearable part was the not actually knowing while having to expect the worst: it meant every little twinge, itch, cough or sneeze brought a stab of fear with it, as did every time her mind wandered. Any of these could be a sign of her swift and excruciating doom from the uncaring Illness._

_Signs or no, there was no hope left for her._

The Wizard was nowhere to be seen.

Lalli reached down deep into himself and pulled out a prayer to the Valar, dragging to his lips and spewing it forth line by line through the clogging enchantment.

“Sweet Nienna,  
Lift this burden!  
Bring relief from griefs unearnéd!

“Now are found your children bound in  
Heavy coils that spoil all joy-gifts

“Break us free from fiends and evils  
And their shameful aims turn to naught!”

Lalli’s eyes were squeezed shut as he sent his entreaty into the True West...


	15. The Easy Way (Series 3, Part 5)

“Why does the so-called ‘easy way’ always involved me getting slugged?” Emil asked with a hint of justifiable petulance. Waking up with your head still ringing from being knocked out tends to annoy even the most affable.

“Your whining attracts too much trouble,” Lalli opined in his garbled Swedish. It had been a priority for the little band of survivors to start learning each others’ languages as they made their way towards Keuruu, but so far Lalli was only making progress in Swedish, Icelandic still eluding him. This put him ahead of the other monoglots, though; Reynir more or less only knew his name, while Emil could write (but not speak--he never managed more than one syllable before his mind went blank) basic Finnish sentences.

Sometimes, whether intentionally or not, someone will find the exact worst possible thing to say and say it. Lalli would later swear that he _saw_ something break behind Emil’s eyes.

The Swede stiffened and quietly told Sigrun, “That will not be a problem henceforth.” Then, and without another word to anyone, he walked around behind their vehicle to check on the horses.

They had found some horses still alive in the debris of the camp, which had posed a bit of a quandary until Emil rather reluctantly let it be known that he was quite experienced in farriery and other equine care, and that the vehicle was slow enough that the horses would do just fine hitched to its rear bumper. Every so often, either Sigrun or more often Emil would unhitch one and gallop ahead and back until it tired, at which point the other would have its turn for exercising.

Unease filled Lalli, though he wasn’t quite sure why.

*

Two days later, Emil had not spoken one word unless directly addressed, and even then, he gave the briefest possible response. Mostly, he spent his time looking after the horses, letting Lalli and Sigrun take the patrols he’d formerly requested so eagerly.

Lalli knew that this had everything to do with what he’d seen in Emil’s eyes, and no one had to tell him what he had to to next; it being his fault, it necessarily fell to him to fix it.

So it was that on the third morning, once the decontamination was done and the report given, Lalli staved off the ravening fangs of the sleep-monster and circled around the vehicle to find Emil already checking over the horses before tying them to the rear bumper.

Lalli knew the moment Emil realized he was there, but the sparkly-haired Swede just kept working. “Emil...”

Without turning his head, Emil told Lalli pointedly, “You had best leave before the _trouble_ my _whining_ attracts comes down on you, too.”

“It was a joke,” Lalli protested feebly. Suddenly, he wasn’t sleepy anymore.

“You don’t make jokes. You say true but hurtful things and laugh at the hurt they cause.” Emil paused. “So laugh already.”

“I did not think that my words you would be hurting this many.” Something about Emil’s obvious pain clawed at Lalli.

“Do you know why I’m so good with horses?” Emil asked, as though Lalli hadn’t spoken. “That’s all they ever let me do, back in Sweden, outside of training. _‘Västerström, stay in camp with the horses! Maybe that way you’ll have time to get better at field-stripping your weapons!’_ ” He paused. “I am _very good_ at taking care of horses.” Another pause. “So, when they asked for volunteers to go to Finland, I thought that I’d finally have a chance to prove that I could be useful; that I could do something other than... take care of the horses.”

“You make good burn in last fight,” Lalli said. “You were very useful.”

Emil scoffed. “So useful you needed to club me.” He turned to face Lalli; his face was wreathed in gloom.

“Not my idea; not my doing. I just tried stupid joke; wish I hadn’t. Emil, I’m sorry.”

“It was me,” Sigrun said, making both boys jump. “You were so caught up in flaming the grosslings that I couldn’t get you to disengage and join the retreat, so I slugged you.” She scratched the back of her head. “I’ll try something different next time.” With an unwontedly solemn expression, she concluded, “You have the trust and respect of your captain when in battle, Emil. Never doubt that.”

“Mine also.” Lalli tried to put in his tone all the things he couldn’t find the words to say.

Ever so slowly, the gloom retreated from Emil’s countenance...


	16. A Far-Off Light (Series 1, Part 6)

On a clear enough day, if you looked hard enough, you could see it: the light of the automated beacon warning ships off from the dangerous shoals near where the Old Village was, still functioning somehow after the world that had brought it into being had ended. That was the worst part of it: that which had been lost was just so tantalizingly close at hand, and so the whisper echoed in every ear, “Why not?” Even those most stubbornly against yearning over what could not be had found themselves softening at the sight of Home-That-Was.

The beasties and the gnarlies never showed themselves to those wistfully gazing across the warding waves; perhaps even that reminder wouldn’t have dispelled the homeward yearning, though.

Eventually, when the babes born on the island had grown to youths, the longing grew too much for some of the men, and they went forth.

None of them returned, of course.

The youths became adults, and had babes of their own; in time, their babes became youths, and some of the men ventured forth once more. Again, none returned.

Before the next youths could come to adulthood, though, the Norwegians came.

The Norwegians had come before, long, long ago, bringing fire and the sword and leaving death and squalor in their wake; the Norwegians who came now brought the light of hope instead, and the promise of fellowship and a new life in a new land.

The debate was long and bitter, even though the outcome was known as soon as the Norwegians had made their offer. Still, there was a debate, with not a few of the youths arguing that when they came to adulthood they would succeed where their fathers and grandfathers had failed.

The elders shook their heads at the folly of youth, and when the votes were tallied, the eldest, Old Man MacMurray by name, read out the result: the village was to go to Norway.

Before they left, though, every one of them walked over to try to see the light, if they could. A fog rose up, though, and none could catch even a glimpse of it.

Perhaps it was best that way.

The whole group fit on the one Norwegian ship that had come, but just barely. The sailors didn’t like the crowded deck, but the ship’s mage assured them that the wards would hold against the sea-beasts.

Some of the elders tried to cheer the youths by suggesting that this would be a quick sojourn in just another temporary resting stop, but Old Man MacMurray spoke from the bow of the ship.

“Let us be honest, if nothing else: none of us will ever see that place again.”

The rest of the trip to Norway was silent; the sailors were pleased about that, at least.

The island stayed clear of what the Norwegians called “grosslings”, as there was nothing left there that would attract them.

The beacon burned on. You could still see it, if the day was clear enough and you looked hard enough...


	17. For Envy of Ensi (Series 2, Part 6)

Ensi Hotakainen never had time for false modesty. This was what doomed her, and her family, in the end.

Even in the wreckage of the Old World, some of the habits and patterns of old lingered on. The Finns never bragged about their achievements; they tended to downplay them instead, lest they draw a kade onto themselves.

Truly, Ensi preferred just to stay away from people, as they were mostly stupid and weird and thus incomprehensible; when she was among them, she had no time (or _spoons_ , as Aunt Kaino always called them for some weird reason or other--stupid weird relatives) for their stupid weird games, which were many and varied, but all stupid and weird at their base. So she never downplayed anything she’d done, though she never bragged about her deeds either. She was simply honest about them.

There were strange faces at the meeting when Ensi gave her report, but that in itself was not unusual, as those transients who might need the information were invited to receive it “from the horse’s mouth”, another saying that baffled Ensi. Ensi tried not to look at them as she told of where the grosslings were today, how many she’d killed, whether any had gotten away from her, and where any that still lived were headed.

The report itself was fairly standard; the reaction to it was decidedly _not_. One of the new faces had grown redder and redder as Ensi made her report; she was beginning to get alarmed when the person jumped to their feet and started _screaming_ at Ensi.

“You think you’re so safe because you’re immune, and because you have your precious magic! Well, you’re wrong! I’ll _show_ you just how wrong you are!”

Ensi had absolutely no idea how to react to this vitriolic outpouring, so she just stood there, unmoving and with a blank look on her face, for a _very_ long time. This was just... weird; it was too weird to be stupid, even. Even after it was explained to her that the person had lost their entire family to a troll attack and infections that had followed, Ensi still had no idea why this would impel the person to curse Ensi for things she never chose to have, could never give to another, and sometimes regretted having at all.

No, Ensi never truly understood the envy she’d unwittingly engendered, even as she dealt with the consequences of that envy over the years thereafter.

Ensi _felt_ when It happened, of course: no mage of her rank could miss such a massive shift in the forces around them unless they had willingly blinded themselves to it; Ensi, being a scout, could not afford to let herself be blind to anything. While she felt It happen, she could do almost nothing to counter It as It happened, as she didn’t comprehend Its source. Ensi found out later that if she had known to be watchful for It, she might have been able to prevent It right at Its onset.

All that was water under the bridge now, and had been for years, with all Ensi’s other lamented failures and mistakes. All Ensi could do now was to try to minimize the damage that seemed to escalate with each new confrontation that she and It had.

During their last confrontation, Ensi had realized that It just might be the death of her.

While Ensi was resigned to the inevitability of her own death, the horror that confronted her was: what if her death didn’t satisfy It? What if It _could not_ be satisfied or sated in any way, by anything? What if Ensi died fighting It, but It survived that last battle?

What if It came after Ensi’s family after she was dead and unable to ward them?

All this and more might yet follow for envy of Ensi...


	18. The Fatuous Few (Series 3, Part 6)

_A long time ago, in a living room far, far away..._

**GM:** Alright, is everyone settled in?  
 **Pete:** Just let me get my tablet up and running...  
 **Annie:** Jim and I are both _so_ excited to see where this new campaign is going! Aren’t we, Jim?  
 **Jim:** Absolutely, Annie! I can’t wait to see what creepy new monsters Sally designed for us to fight, and what kind of loot we’ll get from our next raid!  
 **GM:** Oh, I think you’ll be _more_ than satisfied with those, won’t he, Sally?  
 **Sally:** I hope so.  
 **Ben:** Don’t worry, Sally. Everyone loves the new setting you designed so far!  
 **Annie:** Anyone would think you’d been doing this for years!  
 **GM:** *Ahem* You’re _sure_ you want me to keep GM’ing this campaign for you?  
 **Sally:** Oh, yes. I want to keep testing the magic systems as a player.  
 **{SFX}:** knock knock  
 **GM:** Excuse me, I’ll just get the door.  
 **Corey:** I brought presents.  
 **Sally:** Hmmph!  
 **GM:** Ummmm...  
 **Corey:** Sally, if I say I’m sorry again, may I join your game?  
{beat}  
{beat}  
 **Corey:** Sally, I really am sorry.  
{beat}  
 **Sally:** Oh, you’re sorry, all right.  
 **Sally:** ...But I guess you’ll do to test the other magic system.  
 **GM:** Roll up a character, Corey; we’ll introduce him...  
 **Sally:** Or her!  
 **GM:** ...Or her, at the end of tonight’s session. That way, we can work it in seamlessly.  
 **Sally:** Hmmph!  
 **Corey:** Thanks, guys.  
*  
 _LATER..._  
*  
 **Jim:** I reach into the crate!  
 **GM:** You pull out... {roll} a bundle of carrots.  
 **Jim/Sigrun:** Really?  
 **Jim/Sigrun:** They couldn’t send us some _real_ food?  
 **Ben/Mikkel:** Vegetables are important, Sigrun. Perhaps we won’t develop scurvy now.  
 **GM:** Annie, you and Sally are working on opening the other crate.  
 **Sally/Lalli:** Mrr...  
 **Annie/Emil:** What?  
 **GM:** The crate lid pops open, revealing a tall, slender red-head with a very long braid.  
 **Annie:** I slam the lid back down!  
 **GM:** {rolls} You catch the boy’s {roll} hand in the lid. The noise draws Sigrun’s and Mikkel’s attention.  
 **Jim/Sigrun:** ?!  
 **Annie/Emil:** There’s something in the crate!  
 **Jim/Sigrun:** What?! SHOOT IT!!!  
 **Annie/Emil:** I... think it was a person!  
 **Jim/Sigrun:** Then DON’T shoot it and let it out!  
 **Corey/Reynir:** Owowww...  
{beat}  
 **Jim:** I run back toward the departing ship, waving my arms.  
 **Jim/Sigrun:** WAIT!!! Come back! Man over board!  
 **Corey/Reynir:** E-excuse me, is this Bornholm?  
 **Ben/Mikkel:** No. Definitely not.  
 **Ben:** I point back the way we came from.  
 **GM:** Reynir, you see the ruined skyline of what was once the great city of Copenhagen, dilapidated by ninety years of decay and abandonment. You are definitely in the Silent World.  
 **Corey/Reynir:** Ummm...  
 **Corey/Reynir:** Iiiii think I maybe got off at the wrong place.  
 **Ben/Mikkel:** Yes, I believe it’s safe to assume as much.  
 **GM:** Okay; I think that’s a good place to wrap it up for the night.  
 **Jim:** Glad to have you joining the fun, Corey!  
 **Sally:** Hmmph!  
 **Corey:** ...Are we good, Sally?  
 **Sally:** Well...  
 **Sally:** ...We’ll see how you handle things _next_ session.

_The adventure will continue..._


	19. A Good Night Out (Series 1, Part 7)

Sigrun opened her eyes and immediately shut them again. A taste too foul to be put into words filled her mouth, she was sore all over, and several little men had gotten trapped inside her skull and were trying to dig their way out with pickaxes.

All in all, Sigrun figured the night must have been a success: she was in _just_ enough pain to have had a rollicking good time, but not so much that she’d been wounded or anything. Once the men with the pickaxes finally made their escape, she’d be able to cut through the fog in her memory to confirm it.

Of course, that meant actually _getting up_ , which was going to take some doing.

Step One: re-open the eyes. Sigrun squinted against the pain the light brought but kept her eyes cracked open.

The world slowly and blearily came into focus, and Sigrun wished it hadn’t. Staring back at her were three little gremlins with identical puzzled expressions, one of whom looked astonishingly like a scaled-down Emil.

They were still well over a meter away from her, and Sigrun could tell they hadn’t yet nerved themselves up to come closer, so she knew they hadn’t made any mischief yet.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t give them a little scare, just to remind them of what precisely they were risking.

“I seem to remember,” Sigrun stated calmly, “your mother telling you three that you shouldn’t walk into other people’s rooms while they’re asleep, and that Uncle Trond added that in Dalsnes such an invasion usually left the invader dead.”

As soon as the last syllable left her mouth, Sigrun leapt into action, and quite literally: in one swift bound, she jumped from the bed, flipped over the trio’s heads and flattened herself against the door, facing her stunned audience.

“I’m a _Troll Hunter_ , kids; if I couldn’t fight my way out of situations worse than anything _you_ three could come up with, and feeling worse than I am now to boot, I’d be dead long since.”

Sigrun opened the door and stood aside. “Now get out.”

The three little Västerströms almost bounced off of Mikkel as he made to enter.

“What’s the damage, Mikkel?”

“Actually, we’re ahead by about five thousand kronor; you have a standing invitation to fight at the bar; and _I_ have a position there as a bouncer, if I like.”

The memories were starting to bubble to the surface now. “Oh, yeah.” Sigrun grinned. “I didn’t think I’d find a place like that in this snotty Swede city.”

“I believe those are the exact words that got that first fight started last night,” Mikkel mused. “Emil was mortified, you know, as he couldn’t choose whether to stand up for you or for the honor of Mora (and that of Sweden, by extension).”

“I’d’a flattened him, too,” Sigrun remarked.

“And well he knows it, but that wasn’t at all what held him back. If you’ll recall, he was the one to take down the behemoth with all those tattoos, though it took him a few tries.” Mikkel paused. “Or were you too preoccupied with that third skirmish to notice?”

“Oh, I saw Sparkles take him down; I just thought Twigs or Short Stuff had softened him up a little first.”

“ _They_ were too busy protecting the bar from all the debris flying its way.”

Sigrun grinned again. “The wise one never gets between a Finn and their booze.”

“Indeed.” Mikkel stepped out of the doorway. “I have something made up in the kitchen to help with your head, if you’d like.”

Sigrun nodded. Though the adrenalin rush of confronting the trio had slowed them down for a bit, now the little men were at it again at full bore. As they walked to the kitchen and the promised relief, Sigrun asked, “Did Emil manage to go the whole night without lighting something up?”

“He and Lalli made a little blaze outside using the behemoth’s prize jacket; the owner of the bar was fine with it as long as they kept it out of the bar and under control.”

“All in all, I’d say we found ourselves a place to go in Mora if we want a good night out. What was it called, anyway?”

Mikkel was smirking. “A Good Night Out, naturally.”


	20. Great Geats! (Series 2, Part 7)

The warehouse was an inferno, utterly engulfed in flames. All around it, people were fleeing from the terrible heat, some assisted by the overwhelmed firefighters battling the blaze. Most of their efforts were concentrated on preventing the fire from spreading; the warehouse itself was deemed a lost cause.

Over the roar of the flames came the sound of maniacal laughter. “COWER, YOU FOOLS, FOR THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING! SOON, YOUR ENTIRE CITY WILL GO UP IN FLAMES, COURTESY OF... OLSEN THE INCENDIARY!” Then, in an aside, the voice muttered, “Hmmmm. Probably ‘your city will burn to cinders courtesy of Olsen the Incendiary’ would have been better there. Oh, well.”

Into the conflagration ran THE NORSE AVENGERS, _Captain Sparkle_ in the lead and his faithful team-mates close behind!

The heat was intense, but not enough to overcome the _Scarlet-Braided Wizard’s_ protection on them, so they set to work, using the cold guns _War Mechanic_ had made for them to douse the raging flames!

“WHAT’S THIS? DO YOU DARE TO CHALLENGE OLSEN THE INCENDIARY? THEN YOU SHALL FIND THE DOOM YOU HAVE CHOSEN! FIRELINGS, ATTACK!”

A mass of tiny flames danced into view, re-starting the fires everywhere they went. It only took a moment for _Lall-Eye_ to nock another Tuuri Special to his bow and let it fly into their midst.

While the cold burst extinguished many of the attackers, the rest scattered, and there were enough of them left to give THE NORSE AVENGERS a very hard time of it. While the _Incredible Bulk_ could mash any number of them beneath his mass, they kept dancing out of the way as he tried, the other AVENGERS herding them back into his kill zone while dealing with the renewed blazes these ‘Firelings’ left in their wake.

Eventually, though, the little sparks had all been dealt with, and THE NORSE AVENGERS were on the move again, extinguishing the parts of the warehouse that still burned within a few moments and barreling down into the basement lair of OLSEN THE INCENDIARY!

“FOOLS! DO YOU THINK THOSE WERE MY ONLY DEFENSE AGAINST SUCH AS YOU? I HAVE MANY MORE TRICKS UP MY SLEEVES, SUCH AS THIS ONE!”

Immediately, a strange blue mist surrounded THE NORSE AVENGERS, blurring out the world around them! With the mist came a horrid vertigo: it most keenly affected _Lall-Eye_ , who fell to his knees with his hands over his mouth; but none of the others were unaffected by it.

When the weird misty effect finally cleared and _Lall-Eye_ had struggled to his feet, THE NORSE AVENGERS found themselves staring at... themselves, but not themselves.

The six people staring back at them were wearing some kind of uniform, with the exception of Reynir, who was wearing Icelandic civilian garb; but all their clothes had seen better days, the clumsy repairs evident in the bright light of the room they were in.

_Captain Sparkle_ was the first to realize what had happened. “So,” he said calmly, “we’ve been shifted into another reality, have we?”

The other Sigrun nodded and opened her mouth to speak...


	21. The Ghosts and Mister Reynir (Series 3, Part 7)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I lik the _crack_  
>  That I hav writ  
> Tho it be wyrd  
> I doo lik it
> 
> This is part of the SSSS-as-Fairy-Tale thing of mine.

Once there was a village in the middle of the big, dark, scary forest. Mostly the villagers stayed at home, because the big, dark, scary forest was full of wolves and bears and Bear Warriors. You would be safe if you kept to the path that went through the big, dark, scary forest, though; still, most of the villagers stayed at home.

Of course, it was difficult to stay at home when your home was haunted, as Reynir Árnason found out. He had come into the village one day seeking his fortune, and had promptly stumbled into one: there was a house in the village that had stood empty, as everybody knew it was haunted, even though the last owner’s will granted the house and everything in it to the first person who could spend an entire night there and live.

Reynir had promptly declared that he would stay the night in the empty house, and live in it thereafter, and he had done so, despite the ghosts that cohabited there.

The first ghost to show itself had been that of an old pastor’s wife who had fallen to The Plague long ago; Reynir thought her very nice, and was sad to see her fade after they had had a few nice chats.

The second ghost was not so nice--at least at first. It showed up first as an owl that liked to perch on the living room mantelpiece and stare at Reynir judgmentally. Eventually, it showed itself as a large, brooding man with grey-blond hair and light eyes who _still_ stared at Reynir judgmentally.

After what seemed like a _very_ long time indeed, Reynir managed to start a conversation with this ghost, whose name was “Onni”. “Onni” didn’t like talking much, but Reynir was very good at talking to anyone who would listen, so they talked.

It was during one of their later conversations that the third ghost showed up. This ghost called itself “Tuuri”, and was much more personable than “Onni”, who claimed that he and “Tuuri” were brother and sister. They looked enough alike for it to be so, so Reynir shrugged and kept talking to them whenever they were around.

Reynir liked talking to “Tuuri”, and it seemed like she enjoyed talking to him; if the disapproving looks “Onni” kept giving them were any guide, “Onni” thought “Tuuri” enjoyed them all too much.

One day, though, Reynir asked about the last person who had owned the house, and what had happened to him.

“Oh, _him_ ,” “Tuuri” said dismissively. “He was a really shouty guy named Olsen, and he didn’t like ghosts at _all_.”

“Onni” stated calmly, “He tried to exorcise the lot of us at every turn--and he succeeded with some of us; that’s why I kept Tuuri away until I knew you wouldn’t try to hurt her.”

“To be fair,” “Tuuri” continued, “some of the others didn’t take the exorcisms very well--they tried to kill him, even.” She shuddered. “Fortunately, they didn’t succeed, or we might have had to put up with him being one of us!”

“Perish the thought,” “Onni” muttered. Then he told Reynir, “Actually, being killed ‘by a ghost’”--he put mocking air quotes around the phrase-- “won’t make you become a ghost yourself; it’s a common myth among us, no matter how often it’s disproved.”

“Tuuri” looked disconsolate all of a sudden, but Reynir was able to perk her back up without much trouble.

All in all, Reynir reflected after he went to bed, it was an odd but not bad life. And who knew what interesting conversations the next day would bring...


	22. A Helping Hand (Series 1, Part 8)

Sigrun stormed back into the vehicle, practically breathing fire in her monumental upset over her vacation being wrecked by a lack of food and getting saddled with some stupid civilian too idiotic to even stow himself away properly!

Her mood had not been improved by having to wait until Tuuri came back to operate the radio so that Sigrun could vent her spleen; in fact, it got bad enough that Sigrun went right back outside where there were things she could destroy without hindering their mission.

Now back inside the vehicle, Sigrun came to a sudden and surprised halt. “Where did Tuuri go?” she asked in bewilderment.

“Who’s this ‘Tuuri’ you guys keep talking about?” Reynir asked after Mikkel quietly translated for him.

As soon as the question left Reynir’s lips, the heavens outright _roared_ in response. An instant later, a huge and radiant form appeared in the confines of the team’s suddenly somewhat cramped vehicle, even though this form was far too large to have fit. The form was like that of a huge man, though Reynir and Sigrun both knew at once that this was one of the Old Gods deigning to show himself to them.

Mikkel and Emil were stunned into silence at this positive refutation of their worldview, while Lalli eyed this weird foreign god with the same wariness that marked how he’d been watching Reynir.

Sigrun recognized the visiting deity first. “Loki,” she breathed in a dissonant combination of awe and dismay, and Reynir’s eyes grew wide at the name.

“I am indeed he,” the apparition intoned weightily, and all who heard him understood his speech, regardless of their native tongue. Then he looked at Reynir, grinned fondly, and waved. “Hey, Reynir!”

Far worthier mortals have been rendered speechless by less, so Reynir’s silence surprised no one, least of all the putative trickster god. He was not at all abashed by Reynir’s flummoxed inability to respond, but when he looked at the others, his face was grave again.

“I have made myself known before you that the questions you have, or shall soon have, may be answered.” The vision made a beckoning gesture at something that yet remained unseen, and a moment later, a similarly glowing juvenile fox-spirit bounded into view. “Explain yourself, Puppy-Fox.”

The new vision turned up its nose in disdain. “Why should I be bothered with explanations for these mortals who are all out of my purview?”

“They are all Lalli’s friends and colleagues, and helping them will help him,” the first replied. Then he smiled again, but a knowing, almost conspiratorial smile this time, and added, “Besides, aren’t you just _bursting_ to let your cleverness be known and admired, even if only among these mortals?”

The fox-spirit grinned back. “You know me so well,” it almost purred. “So, where should I begin?”

“Begin with Ensi, naturally.”

The fox-spirit looked at the people silently watching it and said, “Ensi Hotakainen, grandmother to Onni, Tuuri and Lalli Hotakainen, was the first of the full-fledged mages to arise out of the forests and lakes of my Finland after what you call Year Zero; she was also my very first real mortal friend I had ever had. Therefore, I showed her and hers the full benefit of my favor, teaching her all she could learn of the magic humans had been granted. I watched her grow and blossom into the full flower of her fleeting life, but even I could not prevent that which had to be.

“Eleven years ago now, as mortals mark the flow of Time, Ensi and her progeny all died--with the exception of Lalli, her youngest grandchild and the one most like unto her in every possible way.”

The fox-spirit let that sink in for a moment before continuing, “Lalli was but eight years old, and he _needed_ his cousins in order to survive the long journey to Keuruu and safety, so he re-created them, Onni and Tuuri both, in his mind.

“I helped him to re-create them in everyone else’s minds when he reached Keuruu.”

The fox-spirit looked directly at Sigrun and told her, “Tuuri Hotakainen has not existed in the flesh for over a decade; you have never truly seen her, and all of the things you thought she did, one or another of the rest of you actually did.”

Then the fox-spirit turned to address Lalli directly. “Lalli, I’m sorry that I could only bring you and you alone through the ordeal of Saimaa, and I have tried to aid you as best I can since then.”

Finally, the fox-spirit turned to its fellow apparition. “Okey-doke; happy now?”

“I won’t be _happy_ until I see Thor’s face after I short-sheet him tonight,” Loki replied, “but I _am_ satisfied.”

Then he turned to Reynir. “You can’t see ‘Tuuri’ because--SPOILER!--you’re a mage, favored by the Æsir! (And the Vanir),” he mumbled as an aside. “Now, if you really, _really_ want to, and if you squint, you can see and hear her, but she’ll always be a phantom to you, while she’s indistinguishable from reality to the others.”

“Because I did my work well,” Puppy-Fox injected.

“But of course,” Loki said soothingly, “as I’m sure the mortals would agree.” He paused, discreetly signaling their audience to nod. “Anyway,” he continued, “Lalli believes, even now, that Tuuri and Onni are truly still alive, and talking him out of it won’t be easy in any way. If he gets too stressed out, though, or exerts himself too much, he won’t have enough power to keep ‘Tuuri’ around--and may go into a coma as well, so be ready for that. In any case, he and ‘Tuuri’ will act like this conversation never took place unless you force the issue, so be ready for _that_ as well.

“That’s all the advice I can give you, by The Rules. See y’all later!”

As he turned and faded away, Puppy-Fox bounded after him, saying, “Hey, did you need any help short-sheeting Thor?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And here at last is _my_ version of the “Tuuri and Onni are illusions made by Lalli” story; the other version, by **Grade E Cat** , may be found [here](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12418142/1/Three-for-the-price-of-one).
> 
> For all intents and purposes, though, this is only an AU from chapter 6 on.
> 
> There’s more to come (if only because I ran out of room in my self-imposed limits), but not particularly soon.
> 
> You have been warned.


	23. Have Pukko, Will Travel (Series 2, Part 8)

Being a knife-fighter in a world of gunslingers was a risky prospect at the best of times, but it never gave Lalli pause. His grandma would have called it his “sisu”; Lalli called it his indifference. As his grandma had demonstrated, everyone died; as Lalli would be no exception to this, all he figured he could ask was that he die while doing something worthy. The jobs he chose reflected that.

Sometimes, of course, the clients were lying to him about the virtue of their cause; after what had happened to the first such liars, however, fewer and fewer tried to deceive him.

Of course, sometimes the jobs chose him.

*

“LAAAAAAAALLLLLIIIIIIIIII!” The high-pitched squeal was a familiar one, though Lalli hadn’t heard it for quite some time, so he knew to brace himself against the body-slam Tuuri called a hug. Even so, the impact staggered him for a moment.

A tap on their shoulders reminded the cousins that another was present. “Oh, Lalli,” Tuuri said, beaming, “this is my husband, Reynir.”

Lalli wasn’t terribly impressed by the open face, the wide but forthright gaze, and the stupidly long braid, but he took the proffered hand and gave it a quick but firm shake.

“So what’s the brouhaha over?” Lalli asked Tuuri as they walked over to Reynir’s wagon.

“Some of the locals are using my _heritage_ \--” Tuuri spat the word derisively “--as an excuse to try to run us off of our farm, though they’ve been hiding behind masks, the cowards. We were handling it pretty well, until they brought in some out-of-town talent.”

“So who do I need to kill?” Lalli asked in resignation.

“No one, I hope,” Reynir said. “I just want to show these guys that we can stand up to whatever they dish out.”

Lalli was hard-pressed to keep his mouth shut at the man’s incredible naiveté, but he did; sometimes, his taciturn turn was useful that way. Trust Tuuri to find such an innocent out here in the middle of nowhere.

The rest of the ride to the farm was silent, but not uncomfortably so. Tuuri hummed happily to herself, but was content with that, while Reynir smilingly watched her with one eye and the road with the other.

Lalli studied the farm’s layout with a practiced eye, noting quite a few things that said more than Tuuri had mentioned. Around the main house was an obviously freshly erected palisade provided with a number of conveniently placed loopholes for its defense. The main house had its own water supply, and its thick shutters provided another line of defense, if need be. Lalli was willing to bet that their larders were well-stocked, as well.

All in all, this was a place expecting a siege.

The siege began at sundown.

*

Lalli was manning his part of the palisade with bow and arrow; he felt it most apropos, considering the attackers’ supposed motivation. He was also better with bow and arrow than with any sort of gun, and less vulnerable to boot.

A grenade plopped down next to Lalli. Without a second’s hesitation, he picked it up, hurled it back over the palisade, and ducked. Once the ringing in his ears from the explosion had subsided, Lalli acted on what he’d seen, since the grenade was an all too familiar one. “EMIL!” he yelled over the palisade. “Emil Västerström! What on earth are you doing over there?”

A familiar voice came back. “Lalli?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’ve joined the “write a sequel to a **Lazy8** story” train, as this can be considered a sequel to [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/21142538) etc.


	24. The Height of Folly (Series 3, Part 8)

Sigrun Eide dangled perilously from the rigging holding the car to its parent balloon, her knife working at the ropes desperately. The whole balloon would plunge into the sea if she failed to cut the car free, for it was all they had left to jettison. Though Sigrun could feel herself slipping, she kept sawing at the rope. The car was almost free...

*

The six of them had spent over a month underground, chasing after whoever it was who had abducted them through the depths of that volcanic crater. Fortunately, the stores they had found aboveground had held out the whole time, though Sigrun (and probably the others, too, but she was the most vocal about it) would be happy never to see another dehydrated noodle pack again.

Lalli had proved himself a great tracker, constantly keeping them on the right trail in the labyrinthine caverns they’d had to traverse. He was also picking up quite a bit of Swedish.

Emil had proved himself a True Cleanser a number of times by killing the various cave creatures Sigrun hadn’t gotten to first with excessive and untoward amounts of fire and explosives, blocking off the rearward path more than once and forcing the little band onward. He had also proved himself better at handling Lalli than even Tuuri, though they had started out not sharing a language.

Reynir was not terribly useful most of the time, but had begun to have prophetic dreams that had saved them on more than one occasion, and was not too terrible at making ward-runes, so Sigrun was inclined to tolerate him.

Tuuri was useful in translating for her cousin and teaching him Swedish, but was even better at managing Reynir so that he didn’t infuriate Sigrun as much or as often as he had at first.

Mikkel was their indispensable pack mule, muscle man, and cook, though they all wanted to dispense with the last part.

Sigrun herself had saved each of the others innumerable times, both through her battling skills and through her leadership, and each had had the opportunity to return the favor.

So had the six of them thrived through their subterranean trek, where others might have given in to despair at the first (or second, or third...) setback. They had clung to the winding trail before them with Sigrun’s ferocity and Lalli’s stubbornness, and those qualities and others had seen them through.

Once they had emerged into the sunny slopes of a crater far indeed from the one they’d entered, they’d spotted, of all things, a balloon floating off into the distance, and another all too conveniently tethered nearby. At that point, even Reynir was nearly frothing at the mouth to go after those responsible for their abduction and sunless sojourn, so they had piled into the second balloon and cut loose in pursuit.

That a mighty storm should immediately arise and catch them in its toils should not have surprised them (especially Mikkel), but it did. For more than a week, their fragile craft was hurled through the air pell-mell, despite their efforts to escape the driving winds, and now they faced disaster: a rent had formed in the envelope, growing larger by the minute and threatening to send them into the turbulent seas below.

*

Sigrun dangled perilously from the rigging holding the car to its parent balloon, her knife working at the ropes desperately. The whole balloon would plunge into the sea if she failed to cut the car free, for it was all they had left to jettison. Though Sigrun could feel herself slipping, she kept sawing at the rope. The car was almost free...


	25. An Interested Party (Series 1, Part 9)

Øresund Base  
Late Fall, 225

The two redheads looked at the rebuilt bridge rather skeptically, but kept silent as they walked back to the Sveavägen terminus where the others were to meet them. Both were around the same height, though that and their hair color were their only similarities. One was a Norwegian Hunter with a neatly trimmed beard; the other was an Icelandic seiðkona with a pair of remarkably long but rather untidy braids.

They found the Dane and the Fenno-Swede among the crowd waiting for the train, the massive Dane girl who was to be their cook and healer dwarfing the Fenno-Swede mage who would double as their skald; said Fenno-Swede was practically vibrating in his eagerness to be off on their mission. None of the four spoke, even then, preferring to await their other two crew-mates and the organizer in silence.

At last, the train arrived, one of the original Dalahästen models by the look of it, and after a brief wash-down, the passengers were allowed to exit.

A group of three rather short figures emerged from the mass of passengers exiting the terminal and walked up to the four. One, the eldest and the only male, bore a striking resemblance to the Fenno-Swede, who greeted him by calmly saying, “Cousin Torolf.”

The organizer replied, “Cousin Tuuli,” in an equally calm voice. Then he looked at the others. “Mia Södermann and Lalli Hollala, I present your cohorts, Sigurd Eide, Michaela Madsen, Reyndis Árnadóttir, and Tuuli Västerström.”

“We’re cousins, too, if I’m not mistaken,” Lalli told Tuuli in Finnish, who grinned and nodded.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Lalli. You’ll be our scout?” Tuuli’s reply was in Swedish.

Lalli nodded, letting Mia jump in with, “And she and I are both Cleansers; I’m here because the two of us are a team--the Cleansers call it being ‘wingmen’, though I have no clue why.”

“And we’re all the more fortunate for it,” Torolf said with practiced charm, “because the two of you are known as the best Cleansers Karlstad has to offer.”

Mia looked at Torolf dubiously, while Lalli ignored him in favor of asking Tuuli a number of questions in Finnish.

“Well, now that we’re all here, let’s get you all kitted out and send you on your way!” Torolf enthused, ushering them back toward the bridge.

“Yeah, about that,” Sigurd said as they walked. “Torolf, are you _sure_ that that mess out there will hold up under our vehicle?” He gestured at the rather dilapidated bridge as he spoke.

Torolf smiled a bit too easily at the question. “The Danes assure me that they’ve run several even weightier vehicles across the bridge with no signs of trouble.”

Somehow Sigurd remained less than assured, but he let the matter drop for the moment, as every hand was needed in loading the vehicle, which looked to be a virtual clone of the one from the last Silent World Expedition. Tuuli had assured the other early arrivals that this one was in much better shape, and fitted out with various improvements made with their journey in mind, and had followed this up by completely disassembling and reassembling the engine as a demonstration of his own prowess.

Reyndis was the only one of them not loading the vehicle, but that was because she was busily painting runes on just about every available spot on the vehicle, including the underside, so no one objected.

Once the loading was done, Sigurd turned to Torolf and asked quietly, so that they wouldn’t be overheard, “So, as I understand it, we’re recreating the first Silent World Expedition at the behest of ‘an interested party’, with the consent of the Nordic Council.” Torolf nodded. “Does this ‘interested party’ have a name?”

Torolf said softly, “Not one that I may divulge at present. Does that give you pause?”

Sigurd grimaced. “I’d rather know the devil who’s playing the tune I have to dance to.” But he said no more.

Finally, the vehicle was loaded with both cargo and passengers, so Tuuli started up the engine with a somewhat disgruntled sounding growl, and the Second Silent World Expedition was off...


	26. Into the Silent World (Series 2, Part 9)

The great door shut and latched with a reassuringly solid _Klong_ , the operator turning to give the conductor a thumbs-up.

There was a painful squeal of feedback when the conductor flipped the PA system on.

_“Good evening, and welcome to the Sveavägen express train straight to the Öresundbron base.”_

Sigrun Eide looked around at her fellow passengers on the Dalahästen, automatically assessing how they’d stack up in a fight, if need be. There weren’t very many tonight; only six, including herself.

_“We should reach our destination in approximately 16 hours but you’ll surely be sleeping through most of it.”_

Sigrun’s eyes lit first on Emil, standing with a couple of others his own age, and she bit back a smile. She’d grown oddly fond of him during her time with his Cleansing unit; enough so that she’d been sufficiently irked at their mishandling of him to request that he return with her to Dalsnes as part of the reciprocal aid between the two nations, and doubly irked at their barely restrained eagerness to be rid of him. He’d acquit himself creditably if they came to grief; she herself would make certain of it.

_“By the time we reach the high danger areas of the far south the sun will already be rising and providing us with shelter.”_

The two youths Emil was standing with were a pair of Finn cousins bound for Bornholm from the far-off outpost of Keu-something-or-other. The fuzzy-headed girl had chattered away at Sigrun about it earlier, but she had run on so fast that Sigrun had only caught maybe one word in three. Little Fuzzy-Head wasn’t immune though, which made her a liability if it came to a battle. Her cousin, the Living Twig, was both immune and combat experienced, since he was a night scout, but he only spoke Finnish, which would make communication hard.

_“And we just received word about a sudden change in the weather! Looks as if the moon will share its light with us after all.”_

The tall redheaded Icelander trying to shrink into a corner perked up at this. By the mask hanging around his neck, Sigrun presumed that he was another non-immune. He looked the panicky sort, too; if she had her way, he’d be kept as far away from any action as he could get.

_“Which lowers tonight’s hazard prognosis to only 7 out of 10!”_

Sigrun’s head snapped around to look at the conductor, who smiled calmly back at her. _Only_ 7 out of 10? _Only?_

_“It’ll be a bumpy ride, but not more so than usual. I hope you’ll all have good night’s sleep and a pleasant ride! Thank you.”_

Sigrun looked over at the last passenger, a massive wall of Danish enigma who had muttered something non-committal in response to her greeting earlier. The risk assessment for their journey did not seem to have fazed him unduly, so maybe Sigrun herself was overreacting.

_“Now kindly move to your designated sleeping areas.”_

*

When the derailment came, Sigrun was awake and ready, thanks to Lalli and Emil. Tuuri and the Icelander had both been sleeping soundly, while the Dane had been reading with a small and discreet penlight.

“You!” Sigrun pointed at the Dane, then to the non-immunes. “Dane! Stay back here with the helpless babies!” Then she, Emil and Lalli were running into the foyer compartment, shutting the door behind them.

The battle was already well and truly under way: most of the train guards were already down, but some were still fighting against a swarm of vicious grosslings. Picking up discarded weapons, the Hunter, the Cleanser and the Scout threw themselves into the fray with such desperate ferocity that the grosslings were visibly taken aback.

The few minutes that were left until sunrise came always seemed like an equal number of years to Emil afterwards, but they survived.

*

None of the guards were well enough to travel, and staying with the train after nightfall was certain death, so Emil gave the conductor one of his grenades and showed her how to use it.

“What’s your name?” Sigrun asked her solemnly.

“Agneta.” The conductor’s voice was steady.

“I shall remember, Agneta.”

*

The six passengers and three cats were out of earshot of the train before Sigrun brought them to a halt.

“We’re in deep trouble, folks,” she told her impromptu crew. “If I’m right, we’re at least ten days’ walk from the Cleansed areas around Mora, and probably much further. Öresundbron is nearer, but to get there we’d need to go through the worst troll country in Sweden. Either way, we’re going to have to fight our way to safety. We’ll have to push ourselves not _to_ our limits but _past_ them from now until we see the walls of Mora if we want to survive, but I know we can do this. Now, let’s get moving again!”

The little band fled northward toward the only safety they had any prayer of reaching...


	27. The Interesting Thing (Series 3, Part 9)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of the ["Correspondence"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8732425/chapters/20019610) continuity.

“You know, your grandfather would be really annoyed to see you treating his things so casually.”

The boy had contorted himself into such a convoluted resting position in the high-backed chair near the fireplace that most people would have sworn that it would be impossible for him to leap anywhere, but they would be wrong, because he did. Fortunately, the explosive reaction to his uncle’s calm statement left the quite fragile volume he was reading undamaged.

Eventually, the boy righted himself, looking abashedly up at his uncle and asking, “Does that mean you’re going to tell him?”

The man adopted a determinedly serious and pensive mien, gazing somewhere off to the boy’s left. “Our family places great importance upon kindness. However, I cannot afford to be unthinkingly kind; I’m a general. If I do someone a supposed kindness, it may well cost them or someone else their life.” He shot the boy a Look. “In the same way, a seemingly kind permissiveness might lead to the loss of irreplaceable things--unless I can be assured that those things will be treated more respectfully in future.”

“Will you credit such assurance as I can give?” the boy asked in reply.

His uncle smiled. “Shall we put it to the test?”

*

“The interesting thing about a book is that whatever tale it has to tell has already happened--that is, the end is already written and set in stone. However, while it has already happened, the story is also simultaneously happening in your mind as you read it, like one of your father’s radio dramas.”

They were seated near the fire, though they left the Old Man’s seat empty out of unconscious habit.

“Books can take you anywhere you desire to go, which is fortunate for those with a yen to travel but not the means.” The man looked at his nephew. “Your grandfather has read, and still reads, many volumes on the settlement at Keuruu, for example.”

“He’ll never get to Finland; not at his age.” The boy’s tone was rather wistful, for he himself often wondered about that far-off land, and the people who had touched his grandfather so deeply that the Old Man was still moved by it.

The man looked at the boy solemnly. “So he knows, and it eats at him every now and again. As for me, I consider it a hidden blessing.”

“What?”

“Your father’s name is Ulf. That was also the name of your grandfather’s grandmother’s grandfather, who escaped the Outbreak with his son’s family. We have his photo, and we know that much about him, but almost nothing else. What did he do in the Old World? Where had he lived, visited and seen? Who were his friends? You see, the man that Ulf was has been swallowed by the years and is lost to time.

“Your grandfather will be known in Sweden for the Twin Triumphs of Kristinehamn-Karlstad, but what else of him will be known? He has written many letters to the Hotakainens; in these letters, he has revealed who he is in a way he might not to any other. If he actually went to Finland and the Hotakainens, would he keep writing? To whom? And would they be as candid as his letters to Lalli Hotakainen especially are?”

The boy cocked his head in puzzlement. “I... don’t think I get what you mean.”

“I mean that your grandfather, my father, is worth being remembered for who he was, in addition to what he’s done. What better way for those who will come after us to know him than through the letters he writes?”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“The good thing about youth is that you’ll have time to think of all these gloomy things. But tell me, what part of that venerable tome had you so fascinated earlier?”


	28. A Jaundiced Eye (Series 1, Part 10)

_There was a crooked man..._

The Crooked Man lived on the edge of the big, dark, scary forest, and went into its gloomy depths whenever he felt like it, for he was old, so he wasn’t afraid. Bears and wolves and Bear Warriors lurked in the gloomy depths of the big, dark, scary forest, but the Crooked Man had once been a Bear Warrior himself, until he got so old and so crooked that he had to retire.

The Crooked Man was very unhappy about having to retire, but he stayed friends with some of the younger Bear Warriors, and sometimes, he would join them in the gloomy depths of the big, dark, scary forest for the Bear Warriors’ Picnic. Those were good times for all involved, as the Crooked Man’s crooked tales were always fun to hear.

Another friend of the Crooked Man’s was Captain Ása Hardardóttir. The Crooked Man had also known her father, Hörður the Hoarder, with whom the Crooked Man had got along very well. The three had had a number of adventures together many years before, which sometimes featured in the Crooked Man’s crooked tales.

The Crooked Man didn’t see Ása very often anymore, so he was surprised to come home from the latest Bear Warriors’ Picnic to find her waiting for him.

_And he wove a crooked web..._

The Crooked Man went into the big, dark, scary forest again the next day, looking for the hidden abode of three Bear Warriors of great renown: Sigrun, the fiercest Bear Warrior ever ever ever; Mikkel, the general dogs-body of the trio; and Lalli, their Cub Scout and pet cat. He knew when he was getting close because all the wolf and bear tracks swerved aside.

When the Crooked Man came to their door at last, he found they had a guest: Emil “Goldilocks” Västerström, a well-mannered young man (when he remembered to be) who had impressed the three Bear Warriors with his good manners and become good friends with Lalli the Cub Scout.

At first, the Crooked Man was displeased, for he wanted to talk business with Sigrun especially, but after some reflection, he realized the boy’s being there was a stroke of fortune, since Mikkel knew a bit too much about the downsides of what the Crooked Man wanted them to do.

“Some young man with more hair than wit has taken up residence in the old Olsen place,” the Crooked Man told Sigrun.

Emil, well-mannered though he was, could not help gasping at this, though he clapped his hand over his mouth to muffle the noise. Even so, the Crooked Man heard, and turned to look at Emil where he sat beside Lalli.

Fortunately, Mikkel asked the question that had immediately come into Emil’s mind. “The _haunted_ Olsen place? And the ghosts didn’t drive him off?”

“Apparently not, for he has lived there for three months now,” the Crooked Man replied. “Now, old Olsen left a few things behind that he had borrowed from others, and now that someone is living in his house, these things can be returned without undue trouble.”

“But we _like_ undue trouble,” Sigrun protested.

“Well,” the Crooked Man said, “some of these things are quite valuable, and anyone who brought them back to their owners might fall afoul of the thieves and robbers we Bear Warriors are always fighting in the gloomy depths of the big, dark, scary forest.”

The thought of fighting off thieves and robbers perked Sigrun up considerably. “So, you want us to bring you the stuff?”

“As soon as you can arrange it, which is why I would like you to have young “Goldilocks” Västerström here be the one to talk with the new resident of the old place. Such a well-mannered young man should know just how to phrase such a request so that the new resident will yield up the items without pause.”

Emil swallowed hard at the smile on the Crooked Man’s face...


	29. Just Another Little Jaunt (Series 2, Part 10)

The islet was both small and remarkably barren, but it _had_ saved their lives—or at least, most of their lives. Sigrun had fallen from the netting just seconds before the others had tumbled onto the islet’s sands, but even though that had been two days prior, the others were confident that Sigrun was still alive.

There was a superabundance of nothing on the islet, but the first dawn had brought them the sight of land a few hundred yards away, so they had swum to this larger place, and now they needed to figure out how exactly they would proceed.

The five were of one mind in the need to find Sigrun as soon as they could; they disagreed quite vociferously on just _how_ this should be accomplished. Mikkel wanted to set up a base camp and ready it for long-term habitation first; Emil wanted to light a series of signal fires, hoping Sigrun would see them and find them herself, or, failing that, that someone on a passing ship would spot them and take them home; Reynir wanted them to wait until he could make them staves that would aid the search and double as weapons at need; Tuuri wanted to set off immediately, without thought for anything else; and Lalli wanted to go out at night by himself, since he worked best that way.

In the end, they tried doing all of these, excepting Tuuri’s brash inclinations. Or rather they tried _starting_ each of these, only to discover that they had none of the tools that would allow them to complete the job, having thrown all their equipment out of the balloon in those last desperate hours before the islet had appeared. In fact, they had jettisoned most of their clothing as well, so great was their need to stay aloft until they could reach land.

They were fortunate enough to find drinkable water fairly swiftly, in the form of a river a klick or so down the beach from where they had crossed. This was indeed a mercy, as none of them had had anything to drink for more than three days; thus, the called the river “the Mercy”.

Fortified by the water, the five of them kept walking along the beach until Mikkel found a ragged assortment of rocks that he claimed could be made into a suitable base camp for them. After some investigation, the others agreed: there was a rough semi-shelter where various boulders had fallen atop each other which could be improved into a basic habitation. So while the Finns went off to try to find edible vegetable matter, the others set to shifting various rocks into the various cracks and fissures to block out any breezes from rushing through them.

It was then that Emil found that none of them had any means of making fire.

Tuuri and Lalli burst into the camp, ready to fight whatever had let out such a hideous wail, only to find that it was Emil. It took quite some time to calm him down, so that they almost missed the much more subtle sound at the rock-shelter’s entrance.

“Meow?”

The cat had been their mascot since they’d found her in the stable complex by the volcano; they hadn’t seen her since Sigrun had fallen. Now, Emil’s howls had brought her here, but did that mean Sigrun was nearby as well?

Without a word, Lalli sped out to follow Kitty’s trail…


	30. The Jitters (Series 3, Part 10)

It was their first night in the Silent World, and Emil was frankly terrified, which was as it should be: their little band was trying to scramble back to Mora in the wake of the Dalahästen’s derailment with no shelter, no supplies, no vehicle, no radio, and no one who knew that they were still alive to expect them. Terror was to be expected; not simply from Emil, but from Reynir and Tuuri as well.

They had made their first camp in a house that would have served well for a grossling’s nest, if only the inhabitants hadn’t died from the Illness instead of trollifying. The three cats with them, Ola, John and Nils, had prowled around and into every crack and crevice they could find before returning to declare the house cleared. Lalli backed them up, which was good enough for Emil, since the thin Finn had somehow sensed the derailment even before the cats.

Lalli had vanished into the night long since, leaving Emil and the cats on their lonely watch. Ola was resting in Emil’s lap, trying to calm him with sustained purring; Nils was patrolling; and John was watching over the two non-immunes, to whom Sigrun still referred as “helpless babies”.

A single candle lit the little hall in which the party slept; even though there were no vulnerable windows to betray their presence through light or heat, Sigrun still demanded that precaution, and the others readily agreed. Still, the feeble, flickering light only made Emil’s watch that much more anxious.

Emil was to wake Sigrun as soon as he swapped out the candles; hopefully, Lalli would be back before that, easing Emil’s mind about _one_ thing, at least.

As Ola purred on, Emil’s mind turned to the journey ahead. During the forced march, he’d been too busy trying to live up to Sigrun’s expectations of him to mull over anything else; now, he had nothing to do _but_ mull things over—or at least, he hoped so.

Despite the foreshortened span of daylight (which would only grow worse as Winter approached, of course), their little band had covered quite a distance, which was good. Remarks from Tuuri and Reynir indicating how grueling they’d found the march were less good, as those two were the weakest link of their group, even if Emil thought “helpless babies” was going a bit far.

The rain and snow had sporadically returned, both adding to the march’s difficulty and yet easing it by ensuring their water supplies were still topped up, and Lalli had managed to bag a few small woodland creatures unlucky and unwary enough to cross his path. Sigrun had seen a deer in the distance, but it had seen her as well, so nothing came of that.

A series of loud rattles on the ceiling above him brought Emil back to the present. As Nils and Ola were still unconcerned, he knew it was simply that the rain had turned to hail, but would the structure that had seen a century or more of such weather choose to yield to it now, or would it hold out until the party sheltering in it left with the dawn?

_SCRITCH SCRITCH SCRATCH_

The sound was louder than Emil had expected; he jumped to his feet, unceremoniously ejecting Ola from her comfortable perch, and went to the door. Softly, tentatively, he scratched across the door in the countersign Lalli had shown him before leaving, and then Emil waited. The cats waited too, all three of them staring at the door in that intense, unblinking way cats had.

The silence seemed to thicken and stretch on interminably as Emil waited for Lalli to respond…


	31. A Kind of Kind Kenning (Series 1, Part 11)

The night was slowly giving way to morning as the scout quietly slipped back to the campsite. A big, fat, puffy cloud hung right above them in the sky, and as the sun rose, its light played over the cloud’s textures, sequentially bringing ever-shifting colors to the wisps and filaments in a dazzling display.

For a moment, the scout paused outside the vehicle, his face raised to drink in the magnificent light show as it shifted and glowed above him. A rather disgruntled and somehow very _Danish_ throat-clearing from the vehicle cut short the scout’s moment of aestheticism, but a glance at Emil showed that the other youth had been sharing in Lalli’s appreciation of the celestial display.

Lalli mechanically removed his soiled uniform, his eyes still fixed on the sky as he handed each piece over to Mikkel, but his mind on Emil. That tended to happen more often than Lalli quite liked, because Emil was so _different_ from the others, who all tended to stay in the nice little boxes Lalli had mentally assigned them, while Emil did not.

For a stupid and weird foreigner, Emil had many, _many_ more moments of accord with Lalli than Lalli had ever expected or considered possible; in fact, sometimes Emil was downright _Finnish_ , until he opened his mouth.

Of course, now that Lalli was learning more of Emil’s stupid, weird foreign language, it wasn’t so bad as it had been in the beginning. Additionally, Emil seemed to be making an effort to keep his former loquacity under control: not that he said less, but that his sentences were more basic, if more numerous.

And then there were the times when Emil tried to speak Finnish, revealing his weird foreign stupidity in all its glory.

But now, as in so many other shared moments before, Emil and Lalli were in perfect accord about the majesty of a Danish dawn playing across the clouds above them, even if Mikkel was firmly _not_ in accord with them.

Lalli shut his eyes just in time to avoid the frigid spray blasting the rest of him, which necessarily ended his appreciation of Ukko’s gift above. Gritting his teeth, he endured the rough hose-down until it finally, mercifully ended. He had had to pass through a thick patch of some weird foreign plant on his way back, and the hose-down was spreading the mild discomfort from the encounter across his back _and_ his chest.

The warm water felt both good and bad on his skin, unusually tender this morning, as Lalli climbed into the washtub. Though Lalli was braced in readiness for the usual rough scrubbing needed to eliminate all traces of the Silent World that may have clung to him through the hose-down, it didn’t come. Instead, Emil was much more gentle than usual; gentle enough that Lalli almost expected Mikkel to reprimand Emil. But apparently whatever was bothering Lalli’s skin was visible to their Danish healer, who took one of Lalli’s arms, clucked a little, rumbled something at Emil and handed Lalli two small pills to swallow.

When Lalli woke up, it was full daylight. He vaguely remembered Emil making sure he didn’t drown before the bath was done, helping him into his clothes and half-carrying him to his bunk. Lalli made a mental note to avoid stupid, weird foreign plants that left him needing stupid, weird foreign medicine…


	32. Keep Driving! (Series 2, Part 11)

Lalli still wasn’t back from wherever he’d run the horses off to, which worried Tuuri, as the sounds of battle outside were loud enough that she suspected Sigrun, Emil and Mikkel could use another set of hands in fighting off the small horde of attacking grosslings.

The old highway leading out of Mikkeli had been quite good to them, despite its portentous designation of “13”; in fact, their troubles had only begun after it more-or-less dead-ended into another old highway, one not nearly in such good condition. That was the road that had led them into Jyväskylä, the death-trap they were currently desperately trying to escape as the sun slowly set.

They had been able to bypass most of the other villages and small towns along the way, but there was no way around Jyväskylä, and very few ways through; that was part of why it was an exclusion. The other part of why it was an exclusion was currently assaulting their vehicle as Tuuri drove it at its plodding full speed along the route Lalli had found for them.

The last thing Sigrun had told Tuuri before climbing atop their vehicle was, “Keep driving, no matter what. Do you understand? No matter what, keep driving!”

_FFFFFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM_

The bursts from Emil’s flamethrower were getting longer and closer together. Tuuri was trying not to panic over the implication of this when Reynir’s hand covered hers on the steering wheel; she almost wrecked the vehicle, but aside from copious amounts of profanity that highlighted the idiosyncrasies of the three Norse languages, there were no signs that anyone up top had been shaken loose.

“We need to turn down that alleyway,” Reynir said, pointing at what looked to be a certain death-trap. “Lalli told me he’s got something there that’ll get us clear of all these grosslings, so we need to head that way.”

“Lalli _what_???” Tuuri protested, trying to straighten them back out. Reynir’s grip on the wheel was unrelenting, though, so it was either yield and pass into the alleyway or wreck the vehicle on one side of the opening or the other. Obviously, Tuuri wasn’t about to smash them into a building, though she wasn’t sure going into the tight, dark, narrow passage would be any better in the long haul.

The immediate effect, however, was to restrict the attacking grosslings to a much narrower front in their attacks, easing the work the defenders up top had to do considerably. Reynir yelled something up at Mikkel; Tuuri didn’t catch exactly what it was, but the sound of the flamethrower abruptly stopped.

Before Tuuri could unload on Reynir about _respecting the driver_ and such, she spotted Lalli’s thin figure at the far end of the alleyway. He ran right at them, almost making Tuuri stop when he leapt onto the front hood and thence to the roof where the others were. Tuuri would never have believed it if she hadn’t seen it herself.

Tuuri had been trying to avoid looking in the wing mirrors, but now she saw a thin stream of liquid splashing out behind them. Then, just as they pulled clear of the alleyway, she saw four little things that looked like lit flares fly into the mass of grosslings behind them.

_KA- **THUMMMMMMMM**_

Flames belched from the alleyway, greedily licking at the back of the vehicle…


	33. The Kade Decayed (Series 3, Part 11)

_Once Upon a Time_ …

Emil “Goldilocks” Västerström didn’t like hobnobbing with ghosts as a rule, but he was a well-mannered young man (when he remembered to be), so when his host Reynir Árnason brought a pair into the conversation they and the Three Bear Warriors were having about Trond the Crooked Man’s friend’s lost property, Emil was polite to them, and soon he was glad he had been.

You see, Reynir had come into possession of a haunted house in a little village in the middle of the big, dark, scary forest not long ago. Emil and the Three Bear Warriors had been asked by Trond the Crooked Man to go and ask if they could have some things the last owner of the haunted house had borrowed and not returned, so now they were all in the haunted house and Reynir was asking the ghosts if they knew where the things Emil was asking about were.

“Onni” was suspicious and not inclined to hide it when “he” looked at the visitors, but “Tuuri” was much friendlier and even helpful. “She” seemed especially inclined to chat with Reynir, though “she” seemed quite impressed by Sigrun, as well.

“I think I saw what you’re looking for in the Green-and-Gold Drawing Room,” “Tuuri” said, “but I confess I don’t pay much attention to _things_ anymore.”

“Then let’s go have a look!” Sigrun enthused.

Emil looked over at Reynir. “If that’s all right with… the three of you?” he asked politely. “Onni” and “Tuuri” looked pleasantly surprised to be included, but remained silent, letting Reynir decide for “them”.

Reynir seemed rather intimidated by Sigrun’s enthusiasm for… well… _everything_ , but he responded to Emil’s polite query happily enough, “Sure! Anything I can do to help you guys!”

So off they went to the Green-and-Gold Drawing Room, which was filled with green-and-gold drawings, as well as green-and-gold furniture, green-and-gold glassware, and many other green-and-gold things. The things asked after by Trond the Crooked Man for his friend were in fact in the room; they were in a little pile in one corner, all by themselves.

“Why on earth didn’t old Olsen just return the stuff, since he obviously wasn’t using it?” Sigrun asked.

Mikkel replied, “He never _could_ let go of anything he had his hands on, even if he never thought twice about it.”

“Like this house,” “Onni” concurred. “That’s why he made his will the way he did: he wanted someone else like him to get what he had so assiduously held on to.” “Onni” looked at Reynir. “Fortunately, he failed.”

“Blah blah BLAH. Let’s get the stuff all packed and loaded up, or we won’t get into the big, dark, scary forest until after dawn!”

Reynir looked puzzled at Sigrun’s outburst. “Isn’t that a _good_ thing? The thieves and robbers in the big, dark, scary forest don’t try to rob you in the daytime.”

Mikkel laughed his deep, rumbling laugh. “As Bear Warriors, we are the sworn enemies of all the thieves and robbers in the big, dark, scary forest, so drawing them out to try to rob us is half the reason we took this job to begin with.”

Lalli was looking at the pile suspiciously, the hair on his neck beginning to rise, but before Emil could bring this to the others’ attention, a Great Black Shadow rose up out of nowhere and covered the pile in menacing darkness.

“A Kade!” Lalli spat, hunching his back and hissing fiercely.

“What’s a Kade?” Emil asked, as the others all seemed to know already.

“Onni” was the one to answer. “A Kade is a spirit so filled with envy that it lingers on in spiteful wrath for generations; some will kill any mortals they come across. The last time we saw this Kade was more than a century ago, when it killed twelve people and a cute little kitten.”

“I thought he wasn’t around anymore!” “Tuuri” wailed in horror as the Great Black Shadow loomed larger and larger in menacing darkness. “RUN, everybody!”

Sigrun growled and was obviously about to loudly and verbosely deny any intention of running from a fight, but what happened next stunned them all into silence.

Suddenly, Emil’s hair threw off a huge mass of sparkles, which surrounded him in swirls of gold. One sparkle floated up and hovered directly in front of Emil’s face. “I am Ulf, the King of the Sparkle Fairies, and I am your great-great-grandfather.”

Before Emil could reply to this source of his Goldilocks, the sparkle flew over towards where the Great Black Shadow loomed in menacing darkness, the others following in a glittering cascade. Finally, when they were all gathered around the Great Black Shadow, they all cried out in one voice, _“GO AWAY!”_

The Great Black Shadow shuddered and slowly, reluctantly vanished. When it was completely gone, the sparkles vanished as well.

Sigrun looked torn between pride at Emil indirectly vanquishing the Kade and disappointment that she herself hadn’t had a crack at it, but the others were all just relieved.

An hour or so later, Reynir and his ghostly “housemates” waved farewell to Emil and the Three Bear Warriors as they went into the big, dark, scary forest with the stuff…


	34. A Late Arrival (Series 1, Part 12)

_“RRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEYYYYYYNNNNNNDDDDIIIIIIISSSSS!!!!!”_

Michaela Madsen sighed heavily as she applied herself to the washing, hoping Reyndis didn’t hurt herself in her haste to answer Sigurd’s call. For some reason, the gangly Icelandic mage seemed incapable of keeping to the fairly reasonable schedule the team was working under, which was unusual; Michaela had known Reyndis for several years now, and the younger girl had always been scatterbrained but punctual. Even at the Øresund Base, Reyndis had been on time or early, but once they’d crossed into the Silent World…

Mia and Lalli eyed Sigurd warily, hoping their fuming captain would do no more than blow smoke at Reyndis once the laggard joined them, and not too much, at that. This was only the third day of the expedition, so they were all still getting a feel for each other, more or less; Mia and Lalli had the advantage of being wingmen, so their teamwork was honed to a fine edge, but the others were all pretty much unknown quantities.

Fortunately, all of them were immune, so there was no need for the elaborate precautions their predecessor expedition had been obliged to undertake, though most of them wouldn’t have shunned a wash-up after returning from a day in the field, either.

Once Sigurd had vented his spleen sufficiently at poor Reyndis, her face near the color of her braid by the end, they walked out along the great stone causeway to the rickety pier by the tumble-down remnants of the lighthouse. No ship would be waiting to offload supplies for them; their mysterious sponsor had merely instructed them to place a small but heavy stone plaque to commemorate the event and requested photographic proof of same. Neither of these were unreasonable, so the group wrestled the stone into position next to the rusted-out winches and waited for Michaela and Tuuli to get the camera set up.

The photograph was supposed to feature them all, so Tuuli set the timer and got into position with the rest of them, though he looked around nervously as he did so. A cold wind blew across the group just as the shutter snapped for the first time, completely ruining the composition and posing, but the camera was set to take a five-picture burst, so ruining one or two was OK for any but a perfectionist. Tuuli was _trying hard_ not to be a perfectionist, so he kept quiet.

The _other_ thing he kept quiet about, and had been for some time, was a nagging sense of danger that just _wouldn’t go away_ , though none of the others seemed to feel it. Tuuli was used to picking up hints of nearby grosslings or other such dangers, but this was different somehow.

With a mighty rumble, an honest to goodness giant burst forth from below ground; Tuuli’s immediate reaction was, _Oh,_ that _explains it_ , followed by a frightened yell as more and more of the giant came forth. Fortunately, it did so within the ruins of the ancient lighthouse, and took its time about emerging into the daylight, or they would have been slaughtered within seconds.

_Un_ fortunately, the six of them were now facing the largest giant any of them had ever seen…


	35. Left and Right (Series 2, Part 12)

The store the boys were raiding was totally unsuitable for a nest, which relieved Emil greatly, though it considerably lowered their chances of finding anything usable, while increasing the amount of explosives they would need to bring it down completely if they had to. Emil was carrying enough to do the job, though.

Emil had seen a great variety of buildings in various states of decay since the mission began, and had learned that the most dilapidated were, rather paradoxically, generally the hardest to bring down. Fortunately, the most dilapidated generally didn’t _need_ to be brought down; on the other hand, if Emil had learned anything at all about the Silent World, it was that nowhere was absolutely safe. Thus, he mentally noted the best places to put charges to bring the place down at need.

When Emil heard the small noise, he looked over to his left. There, to his right, was Lalli, having just returned with his arms full of Old Time bounty.

Emil shook his head and looked down. It was happening again.

From the very beginning of the expedition, Emil had noticed moments where left and right seemed to inexplicably switch out and back again in bewildering flashes, but none of the others seemed to be aware of it. There was no predicting when or where it would happen, and just as obviously no controlling it, so Emil just had to ride it out whenever it happened. After the first few odd looks, he’d stopped mentioning it.

Of course, one of the few benefits of Lalli’s limited comprehension of Swedish was that Emil could vent about it when they were alone without fear of being judged, so now he did, while sorting through what Lalli had retrieved and putting the good items into the wheelbarrow he’d found.

“Yep. Left and right went bad again.”

Emil stopped in stunned amazement at the laconic utterance. He was so startled that he almost dropped the wheelbarrow. Before he could gather his wits to express his incredulity that someone else noticed and _he wasn’t going crazy, thank Nobel_ , Lalli spoke again.

“Does that sometimes. Don’t know why.” Lalli gestured at the rifle slung on his back. “These go away and back, too.”

Emil grimaced and nodded. “At least they’re there when we need them,” he pointed out. Then, in an effort to relieve the gloom that seemed to have taken up permanent residence on Lalli’s face, Emil added, “Wouldn’t it be nice if it happened to the grosslings, though? I mean, one minute they’re all there, and the next one of their legs has fallen off or something.” He mimed something falling over and writhing on the ground.

Lalli didn’t laugh, but something behind his face relaxed a little for a moment. Hoping he could extend that moment, Emil said, “Hey hey, look,” and gestured at a lone flower he’d spotted earlier, growing in a spot sheltered by a fragment of fallen glass.

Emil watched Lalli’s face carefully, waiting for his Finn friend’s reaction…


	36. The Last Giant-Killer (Series 3, Part 12)

Sing, O Muse,   
of the last and the greatest   
of the slayers of Giants,   
and the course of her quest   
through the quiet land’s coasts,   
fell fleetly followed   
by five fast-held friends,   
for finding her fortune   
that tales might be told   
of her deeds of renown.

Rosy-Fingered Dawn,   
Bright Daughter of Morning,   
her glory did spread   
along the horizon   
as swift, silent Lalli,   
the wily young cat-scout,   
returned from his wand’rings.   
Moon-kissed they were,   
and wide were their ranging,   
for warding the camp.

There awaiting him,  
the protocol wardens,  
with bath and with hose,  
were strong, silent Mikkel,   
the medic so massive,   
and gold, sparkly Emil,   
the fiery young Cleanser,   
a Swedish soulmate,   
to purify Lalli,   
ere seeing his captain.

Decontamination past,   
swift, silent Lalli,   
the wily young cat-scout,   
went into the cockpit,   
that he might report,   
to small, lively Tuuri,   
the master mechanic,   
the polyglot Finn,   
on map and by word-hoard,   
just what lay ahead.

It is _DECIDED!_  
This word from their Captain,   
that their course of action,   
was fixed and unyielding,  
emboldened them all,   
from red-braided Reynir,   
the budding young mageling,   
to even their cat,   
a feisty young feline,   
of calico coat.

“Wait… Are you trying to say that our ancestor was among the Great Sigrun’s crew on the Silent World Expedition?” Three sets of young eyes poured scorn on their obviously duplicitous elder.

“I _have_ told you this before, when you were almost too young to know anything at all. Do you not remember? And certainly I have told of how, ages ago, I myself had the privilege of sitting in the laps of all six of the members of that expedition.”

The scorn redoubled. “You and everyone else’s mother!” one of the youths guffawed. The others giggled at this sally.

“I don’t know about ‘everyone else’s mother’, but I, like my mother before me, was cooed at and made much of by the expedition crew when I was barely old enough to walk.” The elder drew herself up proudly. “But if you must have more proof than the word of your elder, go over to the mantelpiece and look at the pictures resting upon it.” She closed her eyes, the picture of blithe unconcern as the youths hurried off.

When they slunk back, the youths were obviously torn between humiliation at having been so wrong and awe at their elder’s proximity to the Great Sigrun. A strained silence clawed at the youths until one of them finally burst out, “What was she like?”

Before the elder could answer, a barrage of other questions poured forth from the youths, as though the first had been but the initial leak signifying a dam’s collapse. At last, the elder had to call the youths to order or be swept under herself. She then held forth for quite some time about what her mother and grandmother had told her about the few reunions the crew had managed over the years, and about each member of the crew individually.

“Remember, youths,” she concluded, lashing her tail stridently, “that you are of the line of the Incomparable Kisu, the Cat Beyond Grade A who braved the Silent World by the Great Sigrun’s side!”


	37. A Man of Many Parts (Series 1, Part 13)

“You don’t understand _anything_.”

With that, Lalli had fled like all the grosslings in the world were after him. Emil couldn’t really blame his Finn friend for not wanting to face the truth the… “gods”… had just exposed: that Tuuri and the heretofore unseen Onni were simply products of Lalli’s mind and… _magic_ … (and _there_ was something Emil himself couldn’t deal with right now, though he supposed he would need to) working in tandem, as his actual cousins had died long ago; Emil had to think that giving up such a cherished delusion would have to be hard for anyone. With Lalli, Emil thought the task would be even more difficult than the fox-thing had hinted at.

Fortunately, Emil had managed to hustle Lalli outside before any of the others could react to the “visitation”, ensuring they would have some privacy for this first conversation. Knowing that there would be no _good_ way to broach the subject, Emil had opted to address it head-on, talking to Lalli in Swedish about what they’d just seen and what it meant. Emil had spoken softly and gently, trying to express his sympathy in what he feared was all too clumsy a way, while Lalli had remained silent until his outburst and flight.

The others had come out after Lalli had left, trickling out one by one, and Emil had put them off as best he could. Tuuri—ah, “Tuuri” hadn’t reappeared, which no one took as a good sign, but they’d all tried to go about what business they had with their scout and their skald absent. Sigrun and Mikkel had been on the radio for quite some time, presumably about their new charge. Sigrun, at least, hadn’t mentioned the “visitation”, though Mikkel might have been reciting an Icelandic saga for all Emil could tell.

Emil stared out into the gathering gloom. Lalli had been gone for quite some time now; Emil was trying not to worry as he had on Lalli’s first excursion, as he knew how skilled a scout Lalli was by now. The problem was that on that first night, Lalli hadn’t been fleeing from the inescapable; he had only had to deal with grosslings rather than the ghosts of his past.

Even should the thin Finn make it through the grossling-filled night, would the dawn see Lalli’s return to the camp? Emil could only hope so. “I’m sorry,” he whispered uselessly, his mood waning with the light.

The pain in Lalli’s voice still cut at Emil, even through the muting effect of memory. He wished he could have just left it alone, or found some mythical means to draw the hurt from his friend, but he was just a godless Swede whose only accomplishment was maintaining his sparkly golden hair; unless you counted putting his foot in his mouth, which he seemed to have done again and at the worst possible time.

On the other hand, Emil now realized something he should have caught at the time but hadn’t: that bitter and rather derisive parting remark had been _in Swedish_ …


	38. Miles from Home (Series 2, Part 13)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Very dark, this.

_Captain Sparkle_ , brave leader of THE NORSE AVENGERS, looked at the _Winter Huntress_ ’ counterpart (hopefully also named Sigrun), who was their counterparts’ obvious leader, and asked her, “So, we’ve been shifted into another reality, have we?”

Sigrun nodded. “And dozens, perhaps hundreds like us, all normals.” She gestured to a mass of machinery behind her, where Tuuri sat, her hands pulling back from a set of controls. “We brought you here, and here’s why…”

*  
 _EARLIER…_  
*

It took them several days to reach the _thing_ (Mikkel called it an “arcology”, but after the whole “face-cancer” episode, his credibility was in doubt) that was where Copenhagen should have been. All the while, it neither rained nor snowed; and Lalli insisted that only he should be allowed out of the vehicle, during the nights at least. Sigrun was almost as upset over this as Emil, until Lalli led her around the trail of abandoned vehicles on the path they were following.

Sigrun’s assertion that “Twigs is right; we’d better stay inside” only amplified Emil’s private worries over Lalli’s nightly runs.

Emil had nearly pulled his hair out a dozen times over by the time they reached the near edge of the massive structure, but he found no comfort in what followed, for the group had to abandon their vehicle to enter the warped and jagged tear in the structure’s side that was to be their portal into it.

The warren of corridors they found were dust- and debris-free, and all brightly lit. There was no sign Emil could discern to differentiate where they were, where they’d been, or where they were going, but Lalli led them along a specific route without faltering or hesitating once.

Eventually, Lalli stopped at one particular doorway, which opened in front of them. They went inside, but what first caught their attentions was not the massive pile of equipment jury-rigged into one giant machine, but—

Another Tuuri waved languidly back at them, only this Tuuri was painfully, hideously thin--the kind of thin Emil had only seen in ancient photographs about “the Shoah”.

“It’s good to see you, even if you aren’t _my_ crew,” the emaciated Tuuri said in a voice that creaked as though she hadn’t had water for days on end. “Get comfortable; this will take some time—perhaps all the time I have left.”

This other Tuuri told them of what she and others since dead had pieced together: that this was an alternate to their own worlds, and that some group of people had deliberately and purposefully brought them here to suffer, fight and die for the amusement of that sadistic group.

“Nothing grows here,” Tuuri creaked. “The only way to survive is to eat the rations new arrivals bring... or the new arrivals themselves. Even then, even if you survive constantly fighting the newbies and yourselves, the malnutrition will kill you eventually.” She looked down. “I—I just _couldn’t_ , but other versions of me could, and did,” she said miserably. “Because of that, all of my crew died.”

Tuuri waved at the array of weirdly-configured machinery behind her. “Whoever brought us here left behind caches of stuff that would enable one of them to escape if stranded here; I and some others managed to mash this together so that you could get help—for your sake, and that of all the others here, murderous cannibals or not. Find someone or some group powerful enough to vanquish the fiends who brought us here, then turn them loose against our tormentors.”

A fit of dry, heaving coughs wracked the decrepit Tuuri, until they stopped abruptly. She would tell them no more.

*

“They brought us here to fight; we brought you here to fight them.”

_Captain Sparkle_ looked over at the _Winter Huntress_ ; then both turned back to the other Sigrun and _smiled_ …


	39. The Man with the Metal Legs (Series 3, Part 13)

_My name is Mikkel Madsen. I used to be a spy, until the world ended…_

Most people think the end of the world would bring about an end to petty rivalries in the face of the need for survival…

“TUURI! I NEED TO SPEAK TO THE STUPID ONE AGAIN!”

“…Which one was that exactly, Lalli?”

…But they’re wrong. In fact, the end of the world tends to throw people into the kind of enforced closeness that exacerbates all their pettiest problems with each other; oddly enough, these problems can make the principals fight even _harder_ to ensure each others’ survival than they might otherwise.

Five hundred and ninety-two days of surviving the end of the world in the company of two innocent and four not-so-innocent oddballs had been most instructive to Mikkel on human behavior under stress… and instructive on other matters as well.

Sigrun let the troll that had been stalking Mikkel get almost up to the point where he would have had to handle it himself before she put the “cure” dart right between its eyes. Obviously, she was still somewhat miffed at Mikkel for suggesting that he _not_ be the bait this time.

Mikkel watched as the troll briefly writhed in pain as the “cure” worked its way through its Rash-mangled brain. This was always the tricky part, as you could never tell just how resistant a troll would be, or how it would lash out in its efforts to resist. Eventually, though, the troll stopped twitching—permanently.

“Madsen.” The calm, soft word had not been spoken by Sigrun.

When you’re a spy, you collect enemies and rivals like other people collect books or movies. Sometimes these enemies can even be helpful.

Mikkel slowly turned around to face the source of the all-too-familiar voice. The man staring back at him intently did so from atop two prosthetic legs, rather than the flesh-and-blood versions Mikkel had caused him to lose in Saint Petersburg back in 1999. He had no obvious weapons, but Mikkel knew that meant nothing; even without his legs, the man was one of the deadliest fighters Mikkel had had to face.

Other times, however—like after the end of the world—these enemies just want you dead and don’t care what consequences that may bring on them. Mikkel knew by the look on the man’s face that this was the case now.

“Well. I was under the impression nobody got out of Russia before the curtain fell again.” Mikkel studied him some more. “What are you calling yourself these days?”

The man shrugged. “Names don’t mean much nowadays,” he pointed out. “For the time being, I guess ‘Eric Smed’ will work as well as any.” ‘Eric’ looked up, searching the rooftops whence Sigrun was watching the scene unfold. He waved when he spotted her. “Should have known you’d be with Eide,” he said conversationally. “The two of you always had a habit of crossing paths right when I least wanted it.”

Before Mikkel could reply, ‘Eric’ turned and began walking away. “Watch your back, Madsen.”

*

It had become their habit to watch a John Wayne movie every night before turning in; tonight’s feature was _The War Wagon_. This tale of implacable vengeance, while engrossing Onni, Emil, and even Lalli, just brought ‘Eric’ and his veiled threat more firmly to Mikkel’s mind.

Their little band was already threatened night and day by the grosslings; being stalked by a _human_ would be one problem too many. Unfortunately, the only solution that presented itself was not one Mikkel would have preferred; but it was the only solution that presented itself.

Sigrun was on watch when Mikkel silently crept out of the vehicle. “You’re going out to meet him, huh?” she asked without surprise.

“Would you have me hide behind the others until he’d killed them all?” Mikkel calmly replied.

Sigrun pulled a face, but made no move to stop him.

Mikkel was almost out of their camp when Sigrun told him, “I expect you back before sundown.” Mikkel smiled to himself as he walked on…


	40. A Nice Way to Kill Trolls (Series 1, Part 14)

Emil shut his eyes, praying to gods he didn’t believe in that this was all a dream, but when he opened them, Sigrun was still riding the polar bear. Of course, now she was shrieking in delight at the aid this mode of transport gave to her battling skills, since the time to “stand still and stay silent” was long since past.

And the worst part of the whole thing was that, despite how much carnage the polar bear was causing to the grossling ranks, Sigrun was causing still more _on her own_.

This was all most upsetting for a high-strung Swede; fortunately, the grosslings they were fighting seemed even more disconcerted than Emil was at the apparition wreaking havoc among their fellows, so Emil and Lalli were much more easily able to pick them off than was usual.

*

When the polar bear had shown up, only Sigrun had actually known what it was from firsthand experience. All of them had known it was a bear, of course, but it was so much bigger than anything even Lalli had seen before, and such a spectral shade of white that both Reynir and Lalli had assumed it was yet another ghost come to assail them. The fact that it had seemingly materialized out of a thick fog that had rolled in over the last hour or so did not tend to dispel the sentiment; even Emil had felt a numinous shiver run down his spine.

Sigrun had known better.

In a fit of what would have been called insanity in anyone else, Sigrun had stepped forward to meet the gargantuan white bear, her eyes locked with its, and when she was close enough that even a sneeze from the mammoth mass of fur and muscle could have done her in, she’d held up one open hand—and the polar bear had put its nose into her palm.

The near-immediate assault (well, it could have been minutes or even hours later, really—none of them had been paying attention to anything but the spectacle of Sigrun and the polar bear until Kitty let out her screech) by the biggest horde of grosslings they’d seen yet was rather a relief to the astonished others. A grossling assault they could deal with; Sigrun the Bear Whisperer was something else entirely.

And then, Sigrun had vaulted atop the polar bear, clinging on to it by the fur—or maybe just by force of will.

*

The battle was over at last, and none of them bore so much as a scratch—not even the bear.

Sigrun dismounted as easily as she’d leapt upon it, moving in front of the bear as she had when it had first come among them. Placing her palm against its nose, she solemnly told it, “Thank you.” A moment later, it was gone, leaving only the charnel of a hundred or more grosslings to show that it had been there.

Sigrun turned to the others for the first time since the battle, a wild grin splitting her face. Even so, her words were fairly restrained, for her. “That was really a nice way to kill trolls, wasn’t it?”


	41. Nurturing Naturally (Series 2, Part 14)

“You’re right, but you’re wrong, too.” These were the first words Emil had said to Lalli since the other had fled after the, er, _divine revelation_ yesterday.

Tuuri—ah, “Tuuri” had reappeared soon after Lalli had fled, and there was no little awkwardness attendant in interacting with her before Sigrun finally said, “To Hel with it” and hugged “Tuuri”. “You still feel real enough, Short Stuff.”

After that and a surreal conversation on how things would move forward after this, the tension in the air had finally fallen away. Emil had hoped “Tuuri’s” advent meant Lalli would also return soon, but the scout hadn’t shown back up until the crack of dawn, as was usual.

Thus it was that Emil had seized the opportunity to broach the subject with Lalli when the Finn was as close to a captive audience as he was likely ever to be.

Lalli cracked one eye open in order to glare at Emil in annoyance, but the Swede was still behind him, and Lalli couldn’t crank his head around far enough to get him in view, as his luonto was a lynx rather than an owl. With a little puff of annoyance, Lalli shut the eye again before soap could get into it.

Emil sighed, knowing that the morning wash wasn’t nearly the best time for this, but it was the only time he could be sure Lalli wouldn’t run away, as he had the night before. His hands still working on getting the grime off of the scout’s rail-thin body, Emil continued, “I _don’t_ understand what you went through back then, but I _do_ understand that you love your… cousins very much…” Lalli jerked so that Emil thought the Finn meant to flee, bath or no, but then Lalli settled back. After a few more moments, Emil said, “…and I _very much_ understand what it’s like to be thrown into the midst of a bunch of strangers against your will at a young age.”

Emil finished up the scrubbing and rinsing in silence, but as he handed Lalli the towel, he added, “I won’t press you, but I want you to know that I’m here if you want to talk.” He paused. “Or not talk. Or…”

Lalli paused in his drying to put his fingers to Emil’s chin and gently but firmly shut the Swede’s mouth, and Emil let him, remaining silent despite the lingering wetness the Swede could feel on his chin.

In another moment or two, Lalli was as dry as he was going to get, and struggling into his sleepwear. In other circumstances, Emil would have told Lalli of his regret that today’s foray was to exclude the scout, but he kept silent in mingled hope and apprehension.

Lalli’s head finally emerged from the sweater. The look on his face mingled weariness and wariness, so Emil essayed a nervous smile and tentatively put up a fist for a fist bump. He wasn’t too surprised when Lalli simply weaved away, making for the vehicle and his waiting bed. “…Okay. See you later.” Emil almost whispered the words…


	42. The Night Is Long and Dangerous (Series 3, Part 14)

Lalli was still asleep, and Emil was quietly worrying himself sick.

At the climax of their _extremely_ narrow escape from Jyväskylä, Lalli had assumed a ritualistic pose atop their vehicle and chanted something. When Lalli had brought his hand up from between his feet to high over his head, Emil had felt the hair on his arms rise with the sudden surge of energy—and then the grosslings had begun to die.

A stream of otherworldly force had rocketed from Lalli into the massed attackers, slicing through their ranks with snarls of primal fury, until the only survivors were fleeing into the gathering night. Only after this force, now gathered into the shape of some great cat, had stumbled to a halt and faded away in seeming exhaustion had Lalli fallen to his knees, bleeding from his nose and eyes, at which the hitherto silent Emil had screamed in alarm.

In a surprising display of agility, Mikkel had managed to get both himself and the unconscious Lalli back inside the vehicle without Tuuri having to stop; Sigrun and Emil had had to remain topside until they were sure no more trolls were following them.

That had all happened more than three days ago, and Lalli still hadn’t awakened.

Of the five of them, only Emil seemed more than slightly concerned about Lalli’s continued slumber, but Emil more than made up for the others’ seeming unconcern.

Once they were safely parked in a campsite far enough removed from the dangers of Jyväskylä (and once Emil was able to corner Tuuri so she couldn’t evade his questioning any more), Tuuri had told Emil that the coma was a mage thing: Lalli had over-exerted his magic to stop the attack, and now he had to rest. Emil wasn’t reassured.

Their vehicle had a fairly impressive communications set-up, but they had avoided using it until Jyväskylä was behind them; even now, the interference was still quite intense. Fortunately, Reynir had been working on a galdrastafur to to clear the ether for them, and it actually worked entirely correctly, bringing his success rate to one out of twenty-seven.

Ever since Lalli had shown him he was a mage in the heat of the battle, Reynir had been trying to use his embryonic powers to help their getaway; as mentioned, most of his efforts had failed thus far. This success had allowed the fugitives to get in touch with Keuruu, so at least their families knew that they had survived thus far, and the forces at Keuruu were expecting them.

Unfortunately, their flight had pushed them far to the south and onto a maze of back-country routes with names like “Kuusjärventie” and “Kalliokyläntie”, the latter of which Tuuri claimed would get them to a road that would get them to _another_ road which would get them to Keuruu, assuming they could use all these roads all the way there; there had been several points where they had been forced to reroute or to hack a path through the obstacles 90 years of weather had placed in their way.

Soon, it would be night again, and Sigrun, Mikkel and Emil would have to stand watch in turn while Tuuri, Reynir and Lalli slept. Emil looked at the recumbent form of his friend and knew that, even were they to reach Keuruu, he would not be at ease until Lalli woke…


	43. An Orange That Killed Itself (Series 1, Part 15)

_If I could really speak Kung Fu,_   
_There’s so much I would say to you,_   
_I would try through thick and thin,_   
_And should you want a mandarin,_   
_I would take off of its shelf,_   
_An Orange that killed itself…_

“You mean a lemon.”

“…Hmmmm?”

“That’s what I said a mandarin was like: a lemon that killed itself. You put ‘orange’ down there.”

“They’re both citrus, and when did you learn to read Swedish, anyway?”

“After you told Mikkel you didn’t know what half the stuff on his shopping list was.”

“…Anyway, it’s just a stupid poem; I don’t even know why I started it.”

“Because Tuuri challenged you to find something that rhymed with ‘orange’, and you decided to cheat by using a lesser-known synonym.”

“…You heard that, huh?”

“I may not have Lalli’s bat-ears, or even yours, but I can still hear two kids giggling as they make stupid dares to each other when they think everyone else’s asleep.”

“I was hoping I wasn’t actually speaking, given what ‘Tuuri’ is; I should have known better.”

“An official member of the crew is what she is, unlike Troll-Bait back there.”

“I thought I was supposed to be his mortal enemy now, not you.”

“That freckled ray of sunshine wouldn’t know how to be someone’s mortal enemy if you paid him to; nevertheless, I still think it’s weird that Short Stuff likes him, but Twigs doesn’t.”

“I’ve been thinking about that myself.”

“Don’t strain anything, kiddo.”

“What I think is that Lalli still doesn’t like being reminded of the truth behind ’Tuuri’, and Reynir is the one person on the crew Lalli can’t hide the truth from; ’Tuuri’ just wants to be accepted, and Reynir does, despite seeing through her.”

“In more than one way.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a joke.”

“Not the kind you usually make.”

“Never let yourself be fenced in by the usual, Little Viking; that’s how you get predictable, and therefore dead. Grosslings don’t stay in any nice little box labeled ‘usual’, so why should we? And very little about Lalli’s… um… ‘problem’… is what you could call ‘usual’.”

“Which is why I’m scribbling down bad poetry in an attempt to make one part of him happy while trying to figure out how to make another part happy.”

“And there’s a third part we haven’t seen yet, though the Mora gang says he ’showed up’ there.”

“Do you think ‘Onni’ will ‘show up’ here?”

“He’s supposed to be a big-shot mage, and the only reason we’d need one of those here is if we were deep in the fire, so I hope not.”

“What is Lalli needs him here for some other reason?”

“Since ‘Onni’ hasn’t ‘shown up’ so far, Lalli hasn’t needed him here; if Lalli does, ‘Onni’ will, and we’ll handle that if it happens.”

“Mrh.”

“That’s what I meant about not getting fenced in by the usual: when that happens, the ‘unusual’ gets you all twisted up with worries about stuff that might not happen at all.”

“Or they might yet. Hello, my name is Onni.”


	44. Onni and the Cursed Machine (Series 2, Part 15)

Onni Hotakainen liked machines, as a rule; and if he didn’t actively like them, he usually didn’t dislike them. It was very unusual for Onni to actively dislike a machine, and even more rare for him to hate one.

Onni _hated_ this machine.

The roots of this hatred sprang from the first moment Onni had laid eyes on it as Tuuri had proudly presented it to him this morning. “Just think—it’ll make your life soooooooo much easier, Onni!” she’d gushed at him, all unknowing of the antipathy crackling through the air between her brother and the machine.

For a Finn, and especially for a Finn mage, spirits were everywhere, and in everything. Some were helpful, some were indifferent, and some were actively hostile. No one could predict how any given spirit might react to any other, as any frazzled personnel director from the Old Times might have told them. In this instance, Onni had felt a burning, passionate hatred erupt between his spirit and the machine’s within a single instant.

The real problem was that the machine was a gift, and from Tuuri at that, so Onni had had to smile and nod and pretend he was so very pleased to receive his mortal enemy. It was only much later, after Tuuri had made her self-satisfied way back to her own dwelling, that Onni had realized that he’d missed hearing exactly what the machine was actually supposed to _do,_ but that mattered less than one would expect, as Onni knew that whatever the machine had been built to do would be done poorly or not at all unless Tuuri was there to stand witness.

Well, the first thing for Onni was to determine whether the machine was supposed to be for indoor or outdoor use, which proved to be much more difficult than that sounded. It was a squat round thing with strange protrusions and hoses sprouting out of it in various places, but they all looked both rugged enough for outdoor work and fine enough to be used inside, so that was no help. The castors on its base were good enough to roll it across ground that wasn’t _too_ broken, but the area around Onni’s rooms wasn’t particularly ill-kept, so no help there either.

There was a cable about as thick as Onni’s littlest finger wound around two protrusions obviously designed to hold it, and it ended in a standard electrical plug; obviously, this was how the machine was powered. Keuruu had electricity, though not much, and so its civilian use had only been allowed fairly recently; Onni’s stretch of housing had been one of the first to be electrified. Maybe the length of the cable would indicate whether it was supposed to stay inside or not?

So it was that Onni attempted to unwind the cable, which proved to be his first mistake. An hour later, the welts on his forehead had gone down considerably, he had finally managed to disentangle himself from the cable, and the plug had been firmly connected to the outlet.

Onni hated the machine.

Plugging the machine in proved to be Onni’s _second_ mistake. With a horrible series of rattles and clangs that abruptly gave way to a loud, high-pitched whine that hurt Onni’s sensitive ears, the machine went wild, bouncing up and down and spinning around as the hoses flailed convulsively.

Fortunately, the convulsions ceased when Onni pulled the plug free—until Onni was poised directly above its cylindrical body, having approached it with a great deal of trepidation. When Onni opened his eyes again, he was flat on his back. With a groan, Onni got to his feet and poised himself above the machine once more.

Onni hated the machine.

So, there only seemed to be one control on the machine: a knob with three positions, labeled ON, OFF and REV. The knob was set to ON, so Onni set it to OFF before doing anything else.

It took a very long time for Onni to get up the nerve to put the plug back into the socket. Fortunately, nothing happened when he did.

A _meow_ alerted Onni to the fact that he now had an audience: five Grade A cats had gathered at what they considered to be a safe distance and were watching him with an almost Lalli-like intensity.

Onni examined the machine again. One of the hoses led into a solid tube with a complicated handle that _looked_ like it ought to detach from the main body. When Onni tried it, it worked, and the handle unfolded to expose a new set of controls, none of which worked when Onni tried them.

Obviously, Onni would have to set the main switch either to ON or to REV in order for the machine to do anything; but which should it be? Onni set it back to ON and stepped back hastily, but none of the earlier rattles and groans happened, though the whine returned.

Well, maybe pressing some of the controls on the handle would make something happen.

An hour later, Onni had finally wrested his cloak back from the nozzle, the horrible dust cloud had dispersed, the Grade A cats had come down from the rafters, and Onni’s nose had stopped bleeding.

Onni hated the machine.

Onni sighed and wiped his nose again, admitting defeat. Obviously, he would have to wait for Tuuri to get back…


	45. The Obverse (Series 3, Part 15)

Squealing with delight at her very first visit to The Capital of Scandinavia (or, really, anywhere outside of Finland), Tuuri sprinted ahead into the thick traffic of Outer Mora, Lalli struggling to catch up behind her without getting flattened by the press of people and horses. She even outpaced Emil by a good bit, slithering her way through minute gaps in the crowd with uncanny adroitness… until she took one chance too many.

A sickening SNAP and a scream of mingled pain and outrage announced that Tuuri had come to grief in the horde. When Emil reached her, he could see that her right leg was broken, whereupon Emil almost fainted, this being his first experience of serious injury in someone he knew and was beginning to like.

Emil’s reaction paled beside those of Siv and Torbjörn. Now, usually the two of them had an arrangement where if one was gloomy and depressed the other would be bright and cheery, but this catastrophe was of such magnitude that both of them practically collapsed as one.

Fortunately, Taru was far more levelheaded. “Siv, you’ll need to stay behind here to see to Tuuri; I’ll send for one of my backup candidates to meet us at Öresundbron.”

*

After the local hospital had patched Tuuri up, she’d confided to Siv that four weeks of inactivity would send her right up the wall (unless the Gnorns, putative children to Siv and Torbjörn, didn’t manage it first, but Tuuri kept that to herself). Siv got a devious look on her face before asking whether Tuuri would like a job perfectly suited for her current disability, so the two skalds went off to Siv’s old workplace.

The Mora Institute for Rash Research’s Svensson Experiment Center was decidedly underwhelming to Tuuri’s initially eagerly expectant eyes. When she glanced over at Siv, she could see her thoughts reflected on the older woman’s face, along with a melancholy resignation.

The few researchers present fell upon Siv with surprising fervor. Even after she told them she herself wasn’t returning to work, the fact that she’d brought Tuuri as a replacement practically sent them into paroxysms of joy, Tuuri’s broken leg notwithstanding.

Well, it was a job, at any rate.

*

After Mikkel tended to Emil’s potential face-cancer, the young Swede stayed in the office area for another few minutes, intent on conversation. He had not had the opportunity to introduce himself to the replacement skald, a large woman perhaps a decade older than he who reluctantly vouchsafed her identity as one “Miira Kiianmies”.

When Emil tried to engage her in a longer conversation, the large skald sighed and turned away from him. “Look: I’m not here to be your friend, and I’m certainly not here to be your ‘mommy’. The only reason I’m here at all is to see that my daughter gets her chance at a better life than I’ve ever had.”

Emil didn’t know what to say in response, but she forestalled any reply he might have made. “Now leave me to my work and don’t bother me again.”

This did not bode well, but Emil supposed he could live with it; it seemed he’d have to, at any rate…


	46. A Pipe, a Pot, and a Peppermint (Series 1, Part 16)

The big, dark, scary forest was always big and dark and scary, but it felt even bigger and darker and scarier at night. The Three Bear Warriors didn’t mind this at all, not even their Cub Scout Lalli, but Emil Västerström, a well-mannered boy (when he remembered to be), actually minded quite a bit, though he was too well-mannered to say so (at least for the moment).

There were thieves and robbers in the big, dark, scary forest who liked nothing better than to stalk those foolish, unlucky or desperate enough to be in transit through the depths of the big, dark, scary forest at night, the thieves and robbers falling on their quarry when the night was at its darkest and the big, dark, scary forest was at its very scariest. Sigrun, the head Bear Warrior, had been positively _itching_ for the thieves and robbers to fall on her little band since almost before they’d entered the big, dark, scary forest as the night neared its darkest. Emil had not, though he tried to put a brave face on it, as he liked Lalli, and Sigrun, and even Mikkel—most of the time, anyway.

Emil (sometimes known as “Goldilocks” for his bright gold hair that often sparkled when the light was right) and the Three Bear Warriors were got up to look like ordinary, moderately well-armed hirelings escorting Something Very Important and Valuable through the big, dark, scary forest, because no thief or robber in their right mind would try to rob a Bear Warrior, and especially not Sigrun, the fiercest Bear Warrior ever ever ever. They were bringing certain Very Important and Valuable Items back to Trond the Crooked Man that Old Man Olsen had borrowed and never returned; Trond had spread it about that he was expecting these Very Important and Valuable Items to be sent to him so that the thieves and robbers in the big, dark, scary forest would come after them as Sigrun so wanted them to do.

Emil was watching Lalli the Cub Scout quite as closely as he dared, for Lalli was a cat, and all cats can sense the presence of evil; Emil had witnessed how Lalli had sensed a fiendish Kade moments before it had materialized to attack them, so his cat friend was sure to know whether the thieves and robbers were about to strike. Emil was carrying the Very Important and Valuable Items in a big iron pot, so he wouldn’t be expected to do any fighting; but he would appreciate enough warning of the attack that he could cover as much of himself with the pot as was practicable.

The night was very, very dark now; the only light came from the faint glow of Mikkel’s pipe. Emil wished they were carrying torches; he had a specially-made tinderbox to light things with that never failed to strike, no matter how wet or cold it got. Also, Emil was getting a bit hungry, but whining about things like that was rude, and no matter how hungry Emil was, it never made him forget his good manners.

Suddenly, Emil remembered that the new owner of Old Man Olsen’s place, Reynir, had offered them each a peppermint when they’d first arrived, and Emil had carefully tucked his away for later in the grouch bag hanging around his neck. Well, it was later now, so Emil carefully adjusted his grip on the really big pot and reached for the peppermint.

An instant later, Lalli was hissing fiercely, the hair on his neck standing on end. Mikkel dashed his pipe out, plunging the immediate area into near-complete darkness, though Emil would later swear that he could still see the white gleam of Sigrun’s eager grin through it…


	47. Past Performance (Series 2, Part 16)

The trick to fighting giants and living to tell the tale is always keeping in motion and hitting as hard as you can at every opportunity that presents itself, unless you’re a mage, in which case you need to figure out just how much you can fry it without overwhelming yourself. Tuuli Västerström wasn’t so good at making that kind of judgment just yet, so after the giant attacking them had been splattered all over the remnants of the lighthouse where Reyndis Árnadóttir’s ancestor Reynir had joined the first Silent World Expedition, Tuuli had passed out, remaining unconscious for several days thereafter.

When Tuuli finally awoke, parched and with a horrible taste in his mouth, their golden-haired Swedish Cleanser, Mia Södermann, greeted him with a soft, “Hey, Weasel-Bunny.” Now, a statement like this would normally have just passed by without Tuuli noticing in any particular way, but for whatever reason, this time was different. It brought back to Tuuli’s mind all the times that Mia had seemingly accidentally called Tuuli “Tuuri” over the few days of the mission so far.

Mia’s Fenno-Swede Cleanser “wingman” (and Tuuli’s distant cousin) Lalli Hollala was in their vehicle’s bunk-room with them, but as she was slumped against Mia’s shoulder in sleep, Tuuli felt he could take a chance. “You know who I am.” Then he nodded at Lalli. “But she doesn’t, just yet anyway.”

Mia got a cagey look on her face, replying cautiously, “I… know who you _say_ you are, and I know who I _think_ you are.”

Reincarnation was not a concept anyone in the Known World generally accepted: it flew in the face of the Finn belief in the eternal slumber of Tuonela and the Old Norse idea of Asgard and Valhalla, to say nothing of how the atheistic Swedes and Danes viewed it; Tuuli was not surprised Mia didn’t want to admit she was Emil and he was Tuuri, even in the privacy of the bunk-room.

Tuuli sighed after a moment. “I… don’t blame you for anything, in case that’s part of what you’re worried about.”

The cagey look stayed on Mia’s face, but there was a slight—a very slight—easing behind her eyes. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that our being brought together on this mission is entirely a coincidence?”

“Fate is not coincidence,” Tuuli said calmly but solemnly. “But if you’re asking whether I know the reasons behind our gathering, then I must sadly proclaim my ignorance. Perhaps, though it’s that we’re being given a second chance, each of us and altogether.”

“I’ve found that if you want a second chance, you have to make it for yourself, by and large,” Mia said. She looked at Lalli nervously as the thin girl moved uneasily in her sleep.

“This despite the fact that you and Lalli are living out a second chance,” Tuuli remarked.

Mia probably would have argued the point, but a cry of “RRRRRREEEEYYYYYYNNNDDDIIIIIIISSS!!!” from outside startled Lalli awake, so the matter was set aside for the moment…


	48. The Poets Will Sing of It (Series 3, Part 16)

Finding Sigrun took quite a bit longer than the others had expected, as she had squirreled herself away in a tiny little hidey-hole near where she’d washed ashore, but they did find her in the end. Of course, Emil had had to risk life and limb in order to wake her so that they could get her back to their rather pitiful little camp, but he got through it more or less unscathed.

Once all of them were safely ensconced back in camp, Mikkel drew Emil aside, as the big Dane had something he wished to show the young Swede. Mikkel had worked up a burning-glass as a rude fire-starting device, and he wanted Emil well away from the camp when the firebug saw it, lest his reaction bring the local grosslings down on them.

Surprisingly enough, though, Emil’s reaction, though sufficiently appreciative, was muted; perhaps the young Swede had been thinking along the same lines as Mikkel in this instance.

What was even more surprising over the following days was that they had been on the big island for quite some time now, but they had yet to find any trace of the Illness at all; in fact, they had spotted a number of mammals that yet bore no sign of either infection or fear of humans. Could this island actually be a naturally occurring Safe area?

The geography of the island was intriguing on a number of other points as well: above the beach to which they’d initially crossed over from the islet, there rose stark granite cliffs that formed the edge of a high plateau bounded on all sides by fairly formidable water obstacles. Once they had explored the plateau, Sigrun had firmly declared that “This was sculpted into a redoubt, probably even before Year Zero”, and the others could not help but concur.

With that in mind, Sigrun began a close examination of the cliff face, and was soon rewarded by the discovery of what she excitedly claimed must be an artificial cavern high above the sands. “See how they used the vines and such as camo for the doors and windows?” she asked Mikkel, pointing at the relevant places.

Before Mikkel could answer, Sigrun was climbing the vines and calling for the others to join her.

*

Emil was always impressed by how utterly competent (to say the _very_ least) Sigrun was in matters related to physical combat; it was obviously far and away her favorite pastime. Now, her expertise was on full display as her little band silently explored the seemingly long-abandoned habitation she’d discovered for them. She was almost as excited as Tuuri was at exploring this place, though still worlds more cautious.

“I have a great feeling about all this, Fuzzy-Head,” she confessed to the skald as they probed yet another chamber hewn from the living rock. “When we get this story back to the Known World, we’re going to be remembered forever! It’s going to be another Edda!”

*

Within the room that had obviously served as the bunk-room, they found a skeleton and a book that was just as obviously a diary. The writing was in English, but fortunately, Tuuri could read that long-dead tongue.

Riffling quickly through the aged tome, Tuuri stopped at one particular point. “OK, here’s the last entry.” She cleared her throat. _“So, the Great Winnowing has come at last. All my stratagems have been put into place; I can only hope they will outlive me, and hold the plateau of Prospect Heights against what is to come. As for myself, I choose to die with the world that birthed me; the alkaloid I have chosen is bitter, but not unpleasantly so.”_ Tuuri looked at the others. “It ends there.”

“Kind of him to leave us such suitable lodgings,” Mikkel rumbled.

Lalli, who had been silent hitherto, spoke now, using the fragments of Swedish he’d picked up along their long journeys thus far. “I don’t like this.”

Sigrun snorted. “Join the club. Rather than ‘kind’, I’d call this just a little too ‘convenient’ for my tastes.”

“Are you trying to replace Kissu now, sniffing out a Rat-Beast?” Emil essayed in a somewhat hollow attempt at humor.

Sigrun smiled at him tightly. “Don’t you worry, Little Viking; whatever the secret of this place is, we’ll suss it out, and beat it to death with a blunt instrument if need be.” She yawned elaborately, possibly fooling Reynir, but none of the others. “On that note, why not secure the place and get some shut-eye?”

The others agreed, and so the band settled down in their new quarters for the night…


	49. A Quiet Place (Series 1, Part 17)

It had been four days since the Dalahästen wreck, days full of close calls, quick escapes and bitter disappointments; not the least of these was the sight of the _Baggen_ flying by, all unheeding of the six refugees desperately in need of their notice.

They were still following the Sveavägen line’s tracks, since these were the best and most direct route to get where they were going, _and_ had the advantage of being swept on a regular basis, which both lowered the risk of grossling encounters and raised their chances of getting rescued, though not to a certainty, as the recent _Baggen_ incident demonstrated. They would have to be more careful next time.

The cats had been life-savers many times over; cute little furry life-savers with rather snooty attitudes toward those they kept having to save, but life-savers nonetheless. Emil thought they were keeping score amongst themselves of their kill and rescue counts, but since they were cats, he couldn’t be sure—though he also suspected that Lalli might be able to tell him.

Of course, that presupposed that he and Lalli would be able to speak with each other at all, something their pell-mell hustle along the tracks while the sun gave them cover tended to preclude. The ever-growing cold shielded their campsites during the nights, but the foreshortened spans of daylight meant their travels had to be swifter than most of them were comfortable with; even Emil had had trouble keeping up the pace a time or two.

The best part had been when they got to watch Sigrun run down a deer, which she claimed was the self-same one that had escaped her on that first day: not only had Sigrun’s performance been a true spectacle; not only was there meat for dinner; but Sigrun had been winded enough by the chase to let them take it easier for the rest of the day’s march, which meant marching instead of jogging and marching.

They had reached a charmingly pastoral section of the track line; the whole area was deceptively peaceful. Unfortunately, the only structures Lalli had found were either too far out of their way, nest traps, or otherwise unsuitable for the little band to take shelter in them tonight. Desperate times called for desperate measures, though, so nightfall found them huddled in a tumble-down shell of some tiny outbuilding, their only protection from the elements a few blankets scavenged from the house in which they’d spent the first night of this journey.

Tuuri and Reynir passed out within seconds of snuggling into the sleeping pile, and Mikkel followed soon after. Emil had the first watch again, which was good, as he was ready to swear he wouldn’t be able to get even a wink of sleep in this horribly exposed campsite. Ola stayed up with him, as did Sigrun, but the two humans and the cat were too aware of their potential peril to make any noises, so Emil’s watch passed in silence.

The moon was very bright, but there was no noise at all from outside, which lent everything a dreamlike quality. Emil kept his eyes on Lalli and the cats until Sigrun put a hand onto his shoulder, signaling that his watch was done. Now Emil had to try to sleep…


	50. Quests Old and New (Series 2, Part 17)

None of the Six Sojourners were happy with the Blue Wizard; not Sigrun of the Haladin Guard; not Mikkel Foundling Son of Man; not Lalli and Tuuri Pesky-Door, two Hobbits now very far from the Shire and (of rather more importance to them) a good meal; not Emil Dúnduin, who was wondering how he could redeem his family honor if none of his countrymen ever knew of his valor; not even Reynir Half-Elven, far and away the most easy-going of them. They had passed the Eastern Sea, the Sea of Rhûn, and yet gone on into lands either legendary to them or utterly beyond their ken.

After their escape from the Caves of Otherworldly Regrets on the far shores of the Sea of Rhûn and during their subsequent trek through the Last Desert (which Tuuri and Lalli had believed a myth) on the way to the ruins of the Red Mountains and where the Lands of Awakening had been, they had had to fight off a group of really odd magicians bearing a peculiar and sinister snake sigil who made words in various odd scripts appear in the air whenever someone spoke. Aside from that, defeating them was fairly easy; certainly much easier than fighting off the intermittent dragon attacks that had plagued them from the beginning.

The Blue Wizard had actually winced in shame when these magicians had first attacked, and had disclosed afterwards, “I am ashamed to admit that they are a corrupt offshoot of the teachings I and my fellows attempted to plant in these lands; once we discovered their corruption, we moved to limit the damage they could do by twisting their knowledge into near-uselessness.”

Notwithstanding their successful passage out of the desert into a region of great fertility and verdure, the Six were still not happy with the Blue Wizard, for it was beginning to seem that they were on a journey with no end at all. Indeed, the next time the Blue Wizard went off on his own, there were strong suggestions that the Six simply start for home immediately; Sigrun and Emil refused to countenance them, and the matter was tabled.

The Six had become accustomed to the Blue Wizard vanishing for upwards of a week; so when he returned scarcely a day later, none of them bothered to hide their astonishment. The Blue Wizard was, however, too upset at what he had found to notice their surprise.

“The situation is worse than I had expected, and by far, though not irretrievably so,” the Blue Wizard declared solemnly. “We shall have to plan our attacks and counter-attacks at once.”

The Six reacted to this non sequitur as might be expected: bewildered silence. It had not escaped their attention that sometimes the Blue Wizard assumed that he had told them (or that they somehow knew) things he had never once mentioned; the best way to deal with this was to disabuse him of that errant assumption at the outset. Thus it was that Sigrun told him, “None of us has the faintest clue as to what you’re babbling about.”

The Blue Wizard looked carefully at each of the others around him. Once thus convinced that Sigrun spoke only the truth, he expostulated, “I brought the six of you here in order that you might win a war. This war is between the good folk of the village of Marambaraparatharamda and the evil Lord of the Great Burgh of Kyankanamarakanan, who covets it.”

“And this ‘war’ can be decided by the addition of six warriors?” Sigrun asked skeptically.

“The village itself has perhaps two score souls in residence,” the Blue Wizard replied. “The evil Lord can muster perhaps three score warriors for this fight. Now, this war I’ve brought you into might not seem of any great moment to you, but for those you would be defending, this is of the uttermost moment. Nothing in their lives has been of more importance.” He turned away from the group. “Now, you must make your choice: will you come to the aid of the weak against the strong, or shall you simply make your way homeward, leaving them to their doom?”

The Six Sojourners looked at each other doubtfully, the silence after the Blue Wizard’s question lingering for quite some time as they each pondered the matter…


	51. The Quick and the Bed (Series 3, Part 17)

Emil Västerström had been a hired grenadier for longer than he wished to remember, but never had he run into such a dilemma as this.

Normally, a hired gun had colleagues rather than friends, since today’s ally could be tomorrow’s enemy, but Lalli had always been different. Ostensibly, they couldn’t have been more different: an explosives man and a knife fighter; a hothead and a cool customer. The similes and analogies went on and on, but somehow… none of it had mattered, nor did it matter now.

Thus was born Emil’s dilemma: Emil and Lalli were friends; Emil could no more kill Lalli than he could have killed himself. But Emil had pledged his honor to wipe out the farmstead; while others might turn craven or coldly renege on their commitments, to do either was as impossible for Emil… as it would be for him to kill Lalli.

If it were anyone else, Emil could call a quick truce, meet them in no man’s land, shake hands, go back to his side, and fulfill his commitment.

What could he do?

*

Lalli was torn in a way he’d never been before. Tuuri (and, by extension, Reynir) was family; there was no way he could let her and hers die.

Equally, there was no way Lalli could ever kill Emil.

Lalli had had to kill acquaintances before, of course; it was a hazard of his profession, and had been handled in a “nothing-personal-just-doing-my-job” way by both parties.

There was no way Lalli could ever kill Emil. Even the thought of having to mercy kill Emil twisted Lalli’s guts.

What could he do?

*

The siege let up at dawn; according to Tuuri and Reynir, it always did. Lalli’s stomach roiled regardless, for he knew that sunset would bring the moment of truth.

As soon as he decently could after breakfast, Lalli slipped away to the room he’d been given, eschewing the narrow bed for the floor beneath it, as was his wont. His lips twitched in an embryonic smile as he recalled all the times he’d slept beneath Emil’s bunk; Emil had a soft, buzzing snore that actually settled Lalli’s nerves, rather than jangling on them as most snores did.

Perhaps in a better world, Lalli and Emil and Tuuri and even Reynir could have gone gallivanting off on caper after caper; but they had to live in this world, not any other.

*

The doc who’d patched up Emil’s boss had sent an unpleasant tingle down Emil’s spine; Emil’s parents would have said, “Someone just walked over your grave”. Perhaps that “someone” had been Lalli.

Lalli. Emil still couldn’t figure a way out of his dilemma: his current boss wasn’t the kind to let any of his men walk away from a job, even if Emil could bring himself to ask to be released.

Back in his hotel room, Emil absently played with a few matches, hoping the little flames would send him to sleep. Not being a complete fool, his colleagues’ opinion of him notwithstanding, Emil held the lit matches out over a tin basin half filled with water, so that when he dropped the burnt-down match, it was harmlessly extinguished. Eventually, Emil’s eyes closed.

*

Emil coughed and coughed as he watched the hotel burn. Everyone was telling him how lucky he was to have escaped the conflagration, but Emil paid them no heed; his attention was caught by what he saw in the flames.

Emil could swear he saw a man standing in the middle of the inferno, laughing…


	52. A Restful Ride (Series 1, Part 18)

The steady thud-thud-thud of the horse’s hooves over the soft turf made for a soothing background to Emil’s turbulent thoughts. The field he was letting the horse canter through was wide enough that a grossling encounter was unlikely at best, so his mental distraction wasn’t likely to endanger either himself or the horse.

Reynir had done Emil a great favor, and so should be repaid in some fashion; but Emil hadn’t the least notion of how best to repay the gangly Icelander, just as Reynir himself had no notion that he’d done Emil a favor.

When they had fled the Jyväskylä Exclusion, they had left the horses wherever Lalli had led them for safekeeping before the onslaught had begun. They had only realized this long after the fact, what with everything else that had been going on, and most of them had agreed that there was nothing to be done; the only ones not to agree were the unconscious Lalli and the idealistic (and newly fledged mage) Reynir, who had set his mind to using his powers to bring the horses to them.

To everyone’s surprise, Reynir had succeeded, and without bringing a horde of grosslings in the horses’ wake. Moreover, when the horses had finally caught up with them (shortly after they’d finally turned from the road marked “604” to one marked “23”), the equine duo had brought with them some intangible thing that had knocked Lalli back to wakefulness. So while Emil was stuck caring for the horses again, he wasn’t about to complain, and he owed something to Reynir as well.

Since none of them knew whether the horses were immune or not and considering their extensive absence, Sigrun had insisted that Emil put them in a sort of pseudo-quarantine, sequestering them from Tuuri and Reynir and keeping a close watch on them for any signs or symptoms: this was to last either until two weeks had gone by or until they reached Keuruu, whichever came first; once they made it to Keuruu, they would all go into quarantine regardless.

Tuuri and Reynir were plotting some way around this prohibition, of course, but Emil took keeping the non-immunes alive rather seriously. He wished he could talk it over with Lalli, but their schedules continued to overlap only briefly, since Lalli still needed to scout out their route every night for traps like the one they’d almost stumbled into while following the road marked “607”.

They should be less than a week out from Keuruu’s outposts; every morning, Emil expected Lalli to return with news that he’d made contact with one, though that had yet to occur. Emil wasn’t really sure how he felt about reaching Keuruu: on the one hand, it meant safety for them all at last; on the other, it meant the six of them would inevitably split up, as only Tuuri and Lalli had places in Keuruu. Sigrun, Emil and Reynir would return to their units in their home countries, while Mikkel had spoken of returning to his family farm for a rest (and to let whoever had “volunteered” him on their original mission cool down).

It was most unlikely the six of them would ever see each other, which saddened Emil. It also reminded him that he had a looming deadline by which he needed to repay Reynir…


	53. Recapitulation (Series 2, Part 18)

“…And then I punched the building so hard it died.” “Onni” was looking positively green by the time Sigrun reached this part of the story. While Emil would have understood if the illusory Finn had looked skeptical—Emil had been there for this story, and _he_ still found it hard to believe that it had actually happened—he was puzzled by how this “Onni”, supposedly a mage of far greater power and experience than the Lalli who had done things right in front of Emil even more unbelievable than the story Sigrun was just finishing up, could be so outright terrified by a tale of derring-do that “he” looked like “he” was about to faint.

In stark opposition to “Onni’s” transparent fear, “Tuuri” was gazing up at Sigrun like their leader had hung the moon. This, of course, was not unusual behavior for “Tuuri” either before or after the (Emil gulped at the thought of it, even now) _divine revelation_ that “she” and “Onni” were both magical constructs—illusions born of an orphaned Lalli’s need for family members to have survived the terrible tragedy of his childhood along with him, though today “Tuuri” was hanging on Sigrun’s every word even more intently than usual, which was why “she” missed when “Onni’s” eyes rolled up so that only the whites were showing and “he” silently toppled backwards.

The kitten Emil had rescued stayed by Lalli’s side as the others fussed over “Onni”. The advent of “Onni” had sent Lalli into a slumber almost as deep as when he’d had to invoke his luonto to fight off the murderghosts Mikkel had brought back with him on his excursion to Kastellet; fortunately, “Onni” had been able to convince Emil that Lalli was in no danger this time.

Reynir heard a slightly different story when he went to see Lalli in the Finn’s dreamspace a few moments later. Lalli was resting idly on his little raft, and seemed much less irked at Reynir’s intrusion than he had before. Soon, Reynir found out why.

*

“…And with all of us here, _It_ is much more likely to come after us,” Lalli finished. “We must be even more vigilant against _It_ than against the Death Shades.”

“But they haven’t gone away either,” Reynir protested. “Do you think they and this ‘It’ will make common cause?”

Lalli shuddered visibly at the thought, but shook his head after a moment’s consideration. “At best, _It_ and they will fight each other; at worst, _It_ and they will leave each other be, knowing successive attacks might succeed. The leader of the Death Shades would want dominion over _It_ , and _It_ dominion over the Death Shades, so an alliance will not eventuate.” As ever, Lalli spoke in “Tuuri’s” voice when delivering an analysis; Reynir wondered what effect that might have in the waking world.

*

“Well, that was just _weird_.”

While both Mikkel and Emil silently concurred with Sigrun’s assessment of the situation, neither was of a mind to voice their agreement: Emil out of shock, and Mikkel out of taciturnity. “Tuuri” had been trying to rouse “Onni” when “she” had frozen in place and _flickered_ for a few moments. As soon as “she” had re-solidified, “Onni” had sat up and suggested that they dine and retire for the evening. A moment after Sigrun’s observation, Mikkel had slung the dozing Reynir over his shoulder and they had all gone into the vehicle, shutting the door so the anti-ghost rune on it could activate.

*

Lalli’s eyes opened in sudden alarm. _It_ was coming. He could sense _It_ …


	54. The Roundabout Way (Series 3, Part 18)

The tunnel had almost been the death of the six of them, though not in the way someone hearing about their epic trek through Silent Sweden might be expecting.

Sigrun’s curses had turned the air blue and Emil’s cheeks red when she’d seen the tunnel, but she’d tried to make the best of it, as she always did. Lalli had had to stay back in camp the night before, having nearly wrung himself dry fighting off an inquisitive giant that had been stalking them; the painful irony of Lalli’s saving of them throwing them into danger was like a dark cloud over the others.

“OK, guys,” Sigrun said grimly, “we’ll have to veer away from the tracks here and see if we can feel our way back later.” _Because even_ I’m _not fool enough to take us through a giant kill-tube that might have a train run through it while we’re in there_. She didn’t say it, but they all heard it anyway.

The going had been even rougher than usual, because now they were winding their way through a maze of back-country routes, overgrown fields, and small woods as they skirted tiny towns and what seemed an endless supply of lakes of every size and description. So, not only had their route increased in length, but they were also making even slower progress, neither of which tended to improve Sigrun’s ever-grimmer disposition.

The little band hardly ever went across any of the lakes they encountered on the way; mostly Lalli would tell them, “There are things in there,” and that would be the end of it. A few times, though, they managed to find a small boat that wasn’t as unsound as most and get across the lake astride their path with only minor complaints from a motion-sick Lalli.

As the journey had lengthened, each of them had begun accruing little trinkets they’d found along the way, filling haversacks formerly loaded with provisions. Sigrun not only did not mind this (as long as it didn’t slow them down _too_ much); she had amassed a fair-sized miscellany of her own. Emil had claimed knowledge of various things; knowledge that proved to be mostly spurious, though he had been either close or spot-on just enough times to cast doubt on whether or not his ignorance was as comprehensive as Mikkel asserted.

The nights were still the worst, though. Sometimes Emil saw Lalli twisting restlessly and knew that a grossling was near enough to disturb his friend’s dreams; sometimes the cats went intently still and focussed on something beyond the senses of the others (save only Lalli); sometimes, the group had had to flee through the night, tired though they were, because something had found them and was stalking their little camp. Of course, often the night passed without any such incidents at all, but every one of them was aware of how much greater the danger they were in was by night.

Fortunately, their actual encounters with grosslings had been few and far between—until the final one, the one that came just as they were about to rejoin the rail lines…


	55. A Sojourn in the Silent World (Series 1, Part 19)

The ancient cluster of palaces that made up Amalienborg had not changed much since the original Silent World Expedition had been driven from its sanctuary by a horde of murderous ghosts so long ago. The buildings were a little more dilapidated, the coils of barbed wire a little more rusted, but that was all.

While the horde of murderous ghosts was presumably still around _somewhere_ , the new Silent World Expedition had safeguarded against them using both magical traditions: the Icelandic by Reyndis positively slathering their vehicle with layer upon layer of protective runes, carefully embroidering even more runes into their uniforms, and marking runes into the ground (well, the snow) all around the perimeter of their campsite; while the Finnish was represented when Tuuli sang nightly runos that called on the gods for even more protection, after his long but ultimately successful multi-day epic struggle to send the few quiescent ghosts in the old palace sickroom on to whatever awaited them.

The whole crew was to mount a sortie to Kastellet so that Tuuli could try to repeat the sending-on on any ghosts that might still be lingering in that place. As this had been the source of the murderous ghosts that had bedeviled the original Silent World Expedition, the team considered it unlikely that said ghosts had returned to their old haunts in any numbers and that the sortie was therefore simply a waste of time and effort. On the other hand, if their employers wanted them to waste time and effort on such a useless endeavor (and they explicitly did), then the team would do so, while taking reasonable precautions to ensure any ghosts still in the area couldn’t murder them.

The sortie was planned for the day after they placed the plaque where Kitty had joined the First Crew, which was far enough away that it took an entire day to accomplish. Tuuli wasn’t sure that they should mount consecutive sorties like that, citing qualms about whether they would be rested enough on the second and potentially more dangerous sortie, but acceded to Sigurd’s unbending will, helped by Mia’s and Lalli’s assurances that they’d be rested well enough without a breather and that it was best to just get it over with.

Heretofore Sigurd had been getting rather frustrated at the strange lack of grossling encounters; not that he _wanted_ to put his crew in jeopardy, but a nice beast fight every now and again would certainly break the monotony and keep them all in fighting trim. On the way to the school, however, they ran into a pack of beasts _just_ large enough for Sigurd to purge his frustrations without Mia and Lalli needing to do anything except watch with weapons ready for any other grosslings that might take the opportunity to strike at the rest of the party.

Upon their return to Amalienborg, Sigurd declared himself up to setting forth for Kastellet right after dinner, but Michaela was able to reason him out of that semi-suicidal intention with some sensible discourse. Reyndis almost fainted with relief when Sigurd finally gave in; Tuuli hoped Reyndis would remember to try for a prophetic vision tonight, or as soon as she lost consciousness at any rate.

The rest of the long, long night passed without incident, though that fact failed to alleviate Tuuli’s growing apprehensions about the coming sortie. Still, there was nothing he cared to do to stop it, as anything he did that would accomplish that would hurt the team. Tuuli was not going to hurt the team.

As soon as the sun rose the next morning, the six of them set off for Kastellet and the fate that awaited them there…


	56. Safety (Series 2, Part 19)

All in all, Tuuri was of the decided opinion that having to miss out on a journey into the Silent World would be so much more palatable if there was someone else she could blame for it, instead of her own foolishness in getting her leg broken before they’d even left Mora. _Blast you, Onni!_ she thought petulantly. _Why couldn’t you tag along so I could blame everything on you?_

Tuuri really had nothing else to do or to think about, as it was somewhere around midnight; she’d left work hours ago, but the pain in her leg meant she couldn’t sleep. She wondered what Lalli was doing just then.

*

Emil woke abruptly, fear setting his heart to racing until he recognized where he was. As the adrenalin slowly worked its way out of his system, Emil wondered what Lalli was doing just then.

The thin Finn scout had set off as soon as it was dark enough to give him cover on his scouting run, and wasn’t expected to be back before dawn. Emil hadn’t liked the idea, but he appeared to be alone in that opinion: Sigrun had been confident; Mikkel had been stoic; Miira had been as indifferent as ever; and even Lalli hadn’t seemed anxious in any way when he’d set off. Maybe Emil was overestimating the danger.

Maybe he wasn’t. It seemed like Emil had just closed his eyes when a soft series of beeps started sounding from the proximity alarm. When he opened his eyes again, Sigrun was already in motion, a fierce intensity hardening her features in a way that startled Emil.

Their leader was only at the door for a moment before heading back to the bunk compartment. “Scout’s back.”

Mikkel replied calmly, “Good. Stay put; I’ll make sure he’s decontaminated.”

Emil couldn’t help but mutter, “…Thank heavens…” as he gathered himself together, at which Miira threw him a wordless look of contempt.

*

Lalli disliked Miira, and the feeling was mutual; this much Emil could tell from Lalli’s scouting report, despite not speaking Finnish. He got the feeling Sigrun wasn’t too fond of the Fenno-Swede, either. As for Mikkel, who could tell what he thought about anything?

After Sigrun laid out what today’s sortie would be, Miira took the wheel of their vehicle, and Lalli stumbled back to the office area. Emil hoped he wouldn’t be sick again.

*

“I believe I should stay outside.”

Sigrun jumped on Mikkel’s offer with alacrity. Miira hadn’t left the vehicle, and Emil got the feeling that she didn’t intend to for any such book raid, but the reasons Sigrun cited for keeping Mikkel back would just as easily apply to her as well.

*

**KA- _THUMMMMMMMMM_**

Miira facepalmed and started the vehicle up before Mikkel called for her to do so.

*

“I believe it might be better for you to go on the next raid.”

“I do not.” Miira’s voice was calm but firm.

Mikkel allowed a puzzled look to cross his features. “Why ever not? It would certainly be of aid in retrieving only the more valuable specimens, and therefore increasing whatever additional compensation we would receive.”

Miira shot a disdainful look at Mikkel much like the ones she was wont to give the others. “I value my safety more than any notional ‘additional compensation’ we may or may not receive; as I have already secured my preferred compensation by accompanying this mission, I see no need to stick my neck out any further than needs be.”

“I see.” And with that, Mikkel went back around to the driving cabin to speak with Sigrun…


	57. The Siv Incident (Series 3, Part 19)

“I’m leaving for good! I’m going as far away from Mora as I can get— _and_ I’m changing my name, too! I hate you all and I never want to see any of you again!”

Sune Västerström had always borne a pronounced resemblance to his cousin, the Icon, and as the years went on and the Icon grew ever more iconic, Sune had maintained the resemblance as best he could. He had also waited for some time to start a family, and was thus paying the price of dealing with a restive and angsty teenager while in the sixth decade of his life.

His siblings had been of no help, as neither of them had been blessed with children (officially—there were persistent rumors about Håkan, and there _had_ been that time Anna had “gone north” for several months); so, Sune was on his own. Finally, matters came to a head.

Siv was the only daughter Sune had or would ever have, named in honor of his dead mother, and for most of her childhood, she had been most deceptively compliant. Nothing she’d done then compared to the antics Sune remembered Anna dragging him and Håkan into—or that was how he remembered it. _Now,_ she was always blowing up at him about one thing or another, and neither he nor his wife had the least idea of how to handle her moods.

Siv never argued with her mother, as Sune’s wife Sara was one of those people with whom it is impossible to argue, as she immediately conceded any point which you cared to dispute with her; it was most trying at times for Sune. No, Siv’s arguments were always and exclusively with her father.

The upshot of her latest diatribe was that Siv, having had to “put up with” being cousin (and not particularly close) not only to the Icon and the Genius but to the Great Doctor and the Thespian as well for as long as she could remember, had finally decided that she’d had enough and more than enough of her famous family “dominating her life” and “keeping her from making her own name”, culminating in the vicious exit line above. While Siv had harped on these themes in an increasingly strident manner over the last year or so, this was the first time she’d actually walked out of the house Sune had inherited from his parents.

Both Anna and Håkan, having been drawn into the room by the intensity of the argument whereas Sara had fled, were stunned into silence by Siv’s exit for quite some time, but all four adult Västerströms agreed after the fact that Siv was bound to return after she’d had time to cool off. Wasn’t that what teenagers did?

This attitude, and many others Sune had maintained for most of his adult life, became harder and harder to sustain the longer Siv had been gone. Eventually, Sune hired some slightly shady characters to find his errant daughter; they found her in Iceland, married, happy, and successful in her chosen profession.

She had changed her name and claimed to be an orphan.

Sune was especially crushed by this last, but he exerted one final effort, placing an advertisement in a periodical Siv was known to read. It read: “SIV — I’m sorry. Sune”.

A few years later, another advertisement appeared in the periodical: “SIV — Sune is dying. Sara”.

Siv Västerström never returned to Sweden…


	58. A Time to Mourn (Series 1, Part 20)

_Lalli looked out at the ruins of the camp. The mangled bodies of his friends were smeared across the ground in a sickening mixture of blood and mud and bits of flesh and bone that was only just intact enough to be recognizable as who they had been. Again, the sight was sickening; but worse than that hideous sight was the smell._

_After a long moment of internal struggle, Lalli forced himself to look over at the only other “living” thing left on the field._ It _was looking back at him, silent and motionless, waiting. His grief finally turning to anger, Lalli was suddenly struck by the notion that_ It _was in fact taunting him by_ Its _very motionlessness, as though_ It _were saying outright, “What can_ you _do against me now? You couldn’t keep me from slaughtering your friends!”_

_Lalli had indeed failed to save his friends, but the determination rising in him was pushing him to avenge them. He leapt to his feet…_

…And woke up in the sleeping compartment of their vehicle. All was still; all was silent.

The room was far too quiet for any of the others to be in their bunks, so Lalli knew he would have to venture forth to find them. A tiny voice in the back of Lalli’s mind that sounded very much like Onni whispered at him not to go, cautioning him of what he might find and reminding of what he had found once before…

Lalli shook his head fiercely, trying to fling the memory away. He would _not_ think of it. He _would not._

Lalli moved to the door purposefully. He knew _It_ was almost at hand, and so he needed to warn the others, so blissfully unaware of what _It_ was capable of doing. _And had done already…_

No! He _would not_ think of that! He reached for the handle to open the door…

“Lalli.”

He turned at the soft call. Tuuri and Onni stood about a meter to his left, serious looks on their faces.

As always, Tuuri did the talking. “I know it hurts, but you need to face the truth.”

Lalli’s eyes squeezed shut, but she continued, “You don’t need us now; not anymore. Keeping us around like this just brings shame on you and dishonors our memory.”

_“How?”_ he choked out. “What _honor_ is there in… in…”

“In how we died?” Onni finished for him. “None. The honor is in how we lived, and how we loved. Keeping us here like this makes a mockery of that life and love. You know this.”

Lalli turned away, but there they were in front of him again, a little closer now. Lalli shut his eyes again and admitted, “I can’t live without you two; I’m not strong enough to be alone.”

“But you’re not alone.” This voice, less well-known but still familiar, came from the doorway. When Lalli looked, there was Emil, looking unwontedly solemn. “You have us; and while we’re not the close cousins of your youth, we’re still your friends, like it or not, and we’ll be as close as you’ll let us.”

Emil had been speaking in Swedish, but Lalli had understood every last word. Briefly, Lalli wondered whether the whole conversation had been in Swedish, but before his mind could clamp on to the distraction from this all-too-painful topic, Tuuri spoke again.

“You need to let us go, Lalli.”

Onni added, “At the very least, you need to start to let us go. We can hang around until _It_ has come and gone, but after that, you need to let us rest in peace.” Then they vanished.

Lalli turned back to the door to find Emil regarding him with an alarmed look. “Lalli, what’s _‘It’_?”

Lalli sighed. “I was just going out to warn you about _It,_ but the tale is long and full of sorrow.” He began to explain…


	59. Time and Tide (Series 2, Part 20)

The House of Records was as old a building as any in the village; but for the number etched into the cornerstone, none might have realized that it was but the latest in a long line of such Houses. Seldom did anyone plumb the depths of its archive during this, the heyday of the Fourth Age; even the eldest of the elders hardly ever went there, for who wanted to read of the ancient arts when none now living could recreate them?

Dust swirled and glinted in the beams cast into the shadowed depths of the Far Room when the youth very nearly pushed the elder currently saddled with the job of Archivist and Caretaker of the House of Records inside. The elder made a point of moving to the relevant chest of records as slowly as he possibly could, but the youth didn’t notice the elder’s deliberate lack of haste.

The youth was practically vibrating with impatience as the stooped elder slowly leafed through the ancient papers with his gnarled fingers. Every time the elder paused, no matter how briefly, the youth immediately asked, “Is that it? Did you find it?”

At last the elder said in reply, “Yes, here it is.” Turning to get the papers more fully into one of the sunbeams still valiantly trying to lighten the room’s gloom, he continued, “Set down here is the record of how our village was saved by the pilgrims from the West so very long ago.”

“Read it!” the youth cried. Then, remembering his manners, the youth added, “…please.”

The elder adjusted the Archivist’s Loupe so that his weary eyes could make out the faded scrawls on the papers without undue effort, but before he commenced, he turned back to the youth and asked, “And why has the fire of inquiry ignited so passionately in you on this long-forgotten tale, young one?”

The youth bit his lip before confessing, “I went to Ngengomrang last month for the Festival, and there was a songster who mentioned it in one of his songs, but only in passing; it was a ‘don’t be like this idiot’ song with a verse about the Tyrant Ngemb.”

“Ah.” The elder turned back to the papers. “Bear in mind that this account will use the old names of Ngengomrang and the Tyrant who ruled it, as well as the old name of our village.”

“Which would be Kyankanamarakanan, Kyankan and Marambaraparatharamda respectively?” the youth asked.

The elder nodded sharply in grudging approval. “That is correct. Also, this account was set down in the decidedly prosaic form that was employed by all credible historians of the time; if you are expecting poetry, or magniloquent and breathless passages in this account, you are doomed to disappointment.”

The youth crossed his arms over his still scrawny chest. “I will be content to hear it as they wrote it,” he said, his tone belying his words.

The elder shrugged. “Very well. Let’s see, where does the story begin?” he mused, glancing over the paper anew…


	60. The Task At Hand (Series 3, Part 20)

Whatever Emil had expected to gain from this trip into the Silent World, a mortal enemy was pretty much at the bottom of the list. Miira’s snarky comments on the subject weren’t particularly helpful, either.

Miira was out of sorts for the same reason as Sigrun: the Icelander not being immune like the others had thrown a wrench and several marbles into the gears of the expedition; while they had brought along the already-packed protective gear meant for Tuuri, this untrained civilian with no useful skills and apparently no survival instincts required an extra level of protection that the crew simply weren’t used to including in their daily routine.

Well, at least Miira was as snarky, disdainful and altogether unpleasant to the redheaded stowaway as she was to all the others; probably none of them could have stood it if she’d taken a shine to him.

*

In over five decades of research, the Svensson Center had produced less than 700 test samples, which exemplified its most fundamental problem: there was too much work split among too few people working with too few subjects, and far too little time in which to do it. Tuuri was simply _bursting_ with energy and ideas, but she was only one skald, and hobbled (at least for the moment) at that.

Where Tuuri really chafed was at how the others limited her hours in the Center. The pain and the lack of physical activity combined to cut her sleep time to practically nil, but they wouldn’t let her work! It really was most upsetting.

Every so often, Tuuri found her mind wandering to how the expedition was going. She’d been prohibited from using the radio when she was up late at night, and the usual check-in time was while she was at the Center, so she really didn’t get so many opportunities to chat with her cousin and her erstwhile colleagues.

_Everything’s probably going disgustingly smoothly for them,_ Tuuri thought in sudden annoyance.

*

The vehicle stopped dead, confronted by a wall of snow.

“The road is impassable; the little fool undoubtedly failed to scout a backup route.” Sigrun looked solemn at Miira’s gruff words but forbore to say anything just yet.

Miira turned back to Lalli, using the others’ ignorance of Finnish to tell him, “Congratulations. Your failure to do your job properly has brought us into a perfect ambush setup.”

That got the scout’s attention. “I don’t _fail_ ,” he snarled so viciously that even the others were taken aback. “There are other routes, and I’ll find them!”

Then, without another word, he was off into the snow.

*

“Onni!”

Tuuri had almost literally tripped over her brother on her way back from work, but fortunately, her crutches hadn’t done him any serious damage. A moment later, her crutches were abandoned as her big brother grabbed her in a huge bear hug. This time, they were both unashamedly crying.

The Finns chattered away for hours, for there was much for them to discuss. The fact that Reynir was a mage who had heretofore had no idea of it was one of the main points that they had to worry over, but there were several other matters of concern, like Tuuri’s replacement, Miira.

Something would have to be done about the increasingly acerbic woman; but how did you solve a problem like Miira?

*

The confrontation had been long in coming, but when it came, it exploded with an intensity no one had expected.

“One of these days, the idiocy you and the other fools flaunt in the faces of the gods will get me killed, and then I won’t be able to save you from your folly as I have so often already, so you’ll all die!” Miira’s voice had grown increasingly strident as her diatribe went on, until she was nearly shouting with the rage she’d been supposedly suppressing all this time.

By contrast, Sigrun’s voice was entirely calm and deadly serious as she told Miira, “Actually, the only reason you’re still alive is because your dying would hurt the team in the short run just slightly more than it would help—and it certainly would help, and especially in the long run. The minute I think your death would hurt us less, even in the short run, I will kill you myself.”

Then Sigrun turned away, leaving a speechless and disconcerted Miira on the receiving end of a curt dismissal for once…


	61. An Untimely End (Series 1, Part 21)

The island hadn’t exploded yet, but it was only a matter of time before it did, so all six of them were working like mad to rebuild the balloon.

The island was volcanic, and the volcano was waking up. What turned this from simply “dangerous” to “catastrophic” was that the sea had eaten away at the walls around the primary lava tube; when it broke through, the water would hit lava at around 2500 - 3000 degrees, making the tube a boiler without sufficient outlet for the resulting steam.

So the island was going to explode, and probably very soon, as the volcano had begun to smoke again.

Ordinarily, they might have built a boat instead, but these were warm waters, and the sea-beasts were highly active around the island, which made their original swim from the islet to the island even more miraculous in that they had crossed without incident. So, they were reconstructing the balloon for a journey that they couldn’t avoid, though they knew neither how long it would take nor where their destination was.

The submarine, though truly wondrous in her construction, was utterly useless for their purposes: first, if they tried to escape in her, the sea-beasts would reduce her to scrap in moments; second, all her fittings and parts were too heavy by far for the six to use them on the balloon, where weight had to be kept to a minimum. It was a crying shame, and Tuuri indeed shed a few tears over it when she thought the others weren’t looking; they were, but they pretended they hadn’t seen—even Lalli, not usually the most socially adept of them.

If only that volcano would hold off long enough for them to take flight…

*

They had found the underground sea because of Reynir, of course. He’d had a vision of going down the well in Granite House and through a tunnel into that vast cavern where the submarine rested, and Sigrun had donned one of the wetsuits from the lock to Lake Grant and gone down to prove him right or prove him wrong.

Within the submarine were preserved all the wonders of Old World technology that had become only legends to the denizens of Year 90; Tuuri and Mikkel were in hog heaven going through it all, as Sigrun put it.

Despite the banks upon banks of computers, there were quite extensive written records within the submarine’s vaults; some of these amplified upon the account left by the last tenant of Granite House, detailing how a cult had created or acquired or flat-out stolen a sample of the Illness and prepared to unleash it on their world, how the author had found a way to inoculate himself and other susceptible organisms to the Illness, and how the author had finally broken with the cult and fled here with his notes and specimens.

So was solved the mystery of how the Illness had failed to gain a foothold on the island: everything on it was immune, and had been from the beginning.

Another thing set down in the accounts was a description of the problem that would ultimately doom the island, and, after a foray to see for themselves whether this assessment of their oncoming peril was accurate, the six had thrown themselves into making their escape.

The balloon was inflated and ready, but they were still loading the supplies they’d need when the ground began to heave…


	62. Untitled Fantasy Project (Series 2, Part 21)

Mikkel Madsen, author of “Mars on a C-Note a Day”, “Love and the Modern AI”, “Pearl-Blossoms Across the Sky (and Other Stories)”, and many more such hard sci-fi tales, watched the tall redhead mount the stage with an athletic leap and a manic grin as the MC concluded his hyperbolic introduction of her with, “…your Queen of the Troll Hunters, _Sigrun Eide!”_

Mikkel rolled his eyes. Well, he could only hope they wouldn’t be thrown together too much over the course of this convention; he hated loud noises at the best of times, and she gave off the decided impression that she _was_ a loud noise.

The crowd at the opening ceremony did not seem to share this opinion of the b-movie actress, by all appearances: they were going wild with glee at her on-stage antics to demonstrate that she still did all her own stunts. Well, let them have their fun; the ceremonies would be over soon enough, and then Mikkel could plant himself in Autograph Row and endure the line of fans desirous of gushing over his oeuvre as long as his signing hand would hold up; hopefully, the panels he was on would provide enough of a respite that he would make it through the affair. Mikkel was not looking forward to the koffeeklatsches, though.

A flash of grey at the very back of the crowd caught Mikkel’s eye. Near the doors, a short, young and slightly pudgy girl (he thought—it was so hard to tell nowadays) was dragging a taller, thinner person of about the same age into the room. Both were cosplaying as “grunts” from Sigrun’s latest movie, “The First Rule”, though it had only been out for a week or two.

Near the stage, a gangly redhead almost as tall as Sigrun turned to wave at them, though how he’d heard them over the crowd was anyone’s guess. Perhaps, Mikkel mused, the elongated ears of his elf cosplay actually helped there, though they looked to be falling off if he moved his head too violently, or maybe his impressively long braid was acting as a sensory organ in some mysterious way. In any case, the crowd was too thick for the three of them to get together, so the short one contented herself by waving back.

Mikkel sighed and waited for the ceremony to end.

*

Emil gritted his teeth and waited for the opening ceremonies to end so that the DDR tournament could begin. Here he was, ready to school all comers, and he had to stand and wait for all the introductions and presentations of people he’d never heard of (and wouldn’t have cared about if he had heard of them) to be over so his erstwhile competitors could get out here and the tournament could begin.

Emil had been playing DDR almost as long as he could walk; while he’d had some pretty stiff competition in past tourneys, he still had yet to meet his equal, and was arrogant enough to assume that that day would never come. That was why he made a point of going last whenever they’d let him, so that the other contestants wouldn’t be crushed right at the outset. Let them try their best and have their fun; he would still win regardless.

Then the ceremonies finally ended, and people flooded the game room. A tall, thin figure moving with an almost unnatural grace caught Emil’s eye as it wandered over to the DDR area…


	63. The Utility of Futility (Series 3, Part 21)

They were never going to reach Mora.

They had lost the line of the Sveavägen tracks and could not find them again; there were too many grosslings; the weather had turned into alternating snow, sleet, and freezing rain, with occasional bone-chilling gusts of wind mixed in for good measure; and no one based in Mora was looking for them.

The very hopelessness of the situation called forth an answering rage in each of them—a rage that drove them on along the seemingly impossible path, even through everything that the weather and the grosslings could throw at them and then some. Even Emil’s pyromania was a good thing, as it held back the cold while also warding off the grosslings.

They had to carry the cats along, as the weather had become too much for them. Reynir took Nils, as they got along best; Tuuri took John, who wasn’t too displeased; and Emil was stuck with Ola, which meant he had to take the rear while Lalli took point, since Ola and Lalli cordially disliked each other. Emil was fairly certain that if they’d been left loose, the cats would have abandoned the humans, as all that was keeping the six humans going was sheer willpower, which animals in general tended to be short on, and the aforementioned rage, which the cats didn’t seem to share.

They were trudging northward still, and still going as fast as they could against the weather. The four immunes were arrayed in a diamond around the two non-immunes; as has been said, Lalli took point, Emil was the rearguard, and Sigrun and Mikkel took the flanks. Visibility was awful; even had they been certain of their direction, they might have missed the cyclopean Mora walls by a matter of yards and been none the wiser. Despite this, they still managed to drive off the incessant grossling attacks.

Now, most people would have assumed that the weather was far too foul for the local grosslings to come after the little band, but they would have realized their error after the third or fourth attack. Fortunately, none got close enough to touch any of them, as the crude wards Reynir had daubed on all their clothes proved good enough to slow the grosslings sufficiently for the fighters to take them out—but the weather was wearing the runes away with horrible speed; they were almost gone when the final attack came.

This time, all four immunes had to go hand-to-hand with the oncoming grosslings; even the cats had leapt forth to guard the non-immune pair. Tuuri and Reynir were back-to-back with improvised clubs at the ready when—

—The nearest grossling’s heads began exploding in flames. Lalli had loosed his luonto, hitherto held tightly in reserve against this extremity.

The rest of the grosslings began to flee, unable to outmatch the spectral lynx assailing them. Once they had all passed out of sight, Lalli dropped to his knees, blood dripping from his nose and eyes. The cats had vanished as well, but the only felinoid Emil cared about was Lalli. The young Swede rushed to his friend’s side, just beating out Tuuri; neither heeded Sigrun’s reproaches at breaking formation.

Lalli was unresponsive to anything Emil, Tuuri, Reynir, or Mikkel tried, but he was breathing more or less normally. Sigrun cursed to herself for quite some time as the others all fussed over Lalli, but the grosslings had all fled, as far as she could tell without the cats around. Her frustration mounted as more time passed without an outlet for her to vent it upon, until she finally grabbed Emil’s flamethrower, pointed it above them, and let out a long burst and a loud yell.

The silence after Sigrun’s scream lasted quite a while; it was broken not by a sound, but by a spotlight suddenly illuminating the little knot of people. Voices muffled by masks screamed at them in Swedish, and uniformed figures swarmed around them with astonishing speed.

The Swedish Army had found them at last.

They were hustled into the nearest quarantine facility, though Emil tried to protest that it was unnecessary for the immunes, and all six of them spent the bulk of the next two weeks nearly prostrate with exhaustion; even Sigrun was out like a light for almost two full days.

Eventually, though, all six of them were released and escorted back to Mora, where one final surprise awaited them…


	64. A Very Special Swede (Series 1, Part 22)

Emil was sweating and trembling with exhaustion after the DDR tournament, for he’d just danced as he’d never had to dance before. He’d won, of course, but _only just barely_ —who was that grey-haired boy who went through the moves like he’d been doing them forever?

Some of the onlookers were still hanging around, muttering weird things like “…the best match-up since Hector and Achilles, man!” Emil tried to analyze their weird jargon, but his foggy mind could only latch onto one thing: they kept repeating “Lalli” over and over again.

*

Lalli was sweating and trembling with exhaustion as he searched the convention for Tuuri. What had _possessed_ him to go from his usual haunt in the Call of Duty crowd to the DDR tournament? What had _possessed_ him to enter the tournament?

What had _possessed_ that blond Swede to dance well enough to beat him?

Well, for one thing, wiping the floor with all the other Call of Duty players had palled over the last few months. Lalli had actually been interested in seeing how his skill at figure-skating would translate to dancing; in fact, he’d been pretty confident that it would translate well enough for him to win. Never in his wildest imaginings had Lalli thought a sparkly-haired, slightly chubby Swede would best him but one had.

*

Never in his wildest imaginings had Emil thought that a grey-haired, rail thin Finn would almost best him, but one very nearly had, and Emil just couldn’t get him out of his head. This was far from usual, as Emil tended to avoid rather than engage people in the long term; this was a holdover from his semi-disastrous school days, reinforced by his relations with his co-workers.

There were certain semi-official “rules” regarding eating and sleeping when at a convention; Emil tended to do what he usually did with all other facets of the conventions that he attended to which he was indifferent: ignore them. Today, however, Emil alternated between haunting the food court and wandering the hallways in the interstitial period between panels when all the other fanatics were seeking to rush to feed their obsessions, for he was doing the same, in his own way: Emil was desperately straining to catch another glimpse, however momentary, of that thin, graceful figure.

Just as Emil was about to head back to the food court, an elf and some kind of soldier brushed past him. They were chattering away about something; Emil didn’t know anything about the subject of their discussion, so he more or less tuned it out, until one word among the chatter caught his ears: _Lalli._ That one word was enough to send Emil after them, but they had seemingly vanished without trace.

*

Sigrun Eide, Norse cinema’s reigning Queen of the Troll Hunters, just _loved_ doing the convention circuit; the only things she liked better were action scenes and stunts. She’d started as a medieval martial arts re-enactor at one of those “dinner and a tourney” places, and after a while she’d been contacted by a small indie film outfit, Most Best Productions, run by Trond Andersen, Taru Hollala, and a couple of silent partners.

“Uncle” Trond was actually an old friend of her parents, who were also re-enactors, but volunteer ones at fairs and such: they and he were all “generals” in some fighters’ association or other that Sigrun could never remember the right name of, even though she herself was a captain in that organization. Her parents had never quite gotten over their distaste that Sigrun did what she did for money rather than for love of the martial art; they were slightly more approving of her career change, since she got to join them at the fairs once more.

Sigrun was always ready for a good brawl, and she loved all the little fanlings at the cons she appeared in, so when the terrorists barged in on the Most Boring Panel Ever (which she had only signed on for at Uncle Trond’s behest), a smile broke over her face that should have sent the terrorists running right then and there.

The man chairing the panel, a giant of a Dane named Madsen, made the mistake of trying to reason with the terrorists, who shot him in the leg. Ten seconds later, Sigrun had cleaned the clocks of the other terrorists in the room and was ready to find some more to take down.

When Sigrun charged into the hallway, she almost got her face melted off by a blonde Swede wielding a flamethrower improvised from a gas lighter and a can of hair spray. Sigrun’s grin grew wider, but rather than taking the kid down, she decided to recruit him.

Within an hour, the two of them had cleared the convention of the terrorists; Sigrun either never heard or didn’t care to remember why they’d tried to take the con. She did care to remember her Little Viking’s right name: Emil Västerström.

*

The con had been over for maybe a month when Emil got A Missive from his uncle, Torbjörn Västerström, commanding his appearance at the next performance of “The Nutcracker on Ice”, where he and Sigrun were to be properly introduced. Emil knew he was probably also expected to render his thanks to Sigrun for saving his life and an apology for daring to assist her in her heroism. According to Torbjörn, Västerströms never undertook to engage in heroics themselves: they paid others to do that, as with all else that was beneath them to do.

Emil resigned himself to a boring night, as he knew that even Sigrun couldn’t liven up an “art form” that always bored him to tears, unless more terrorists struck. Emil knew he couldn’t be so lucky for that to occur.

What Emil didn’t know was that he would espy a very familiar figure out on the ice…


	65. Verisimilitude (Series 2, Part 22)

Long before the Saimaa Incident, Onni had once told Lalli, “Our world is built upon a mountain of anguish”; Lalli had never been more aware of the truth of that statement than he was now.

Onni had also told him, “When something is your fault, you must be ready to face the consequences”, and, “Sometimes, the only way to protect those you love is to take their fate as your own.”

The most obvious way to deal with _It_ once and for all was also the way that would cause Lalli the most pain possible; and even then, none of them could be sure that the plan would work at all, so Lalli might have to go through all of that pain for nothing.

But Lalli still knew that he had to go through with the plan.

The glyph thrummed with barely restrained power as Lalli approached it; he was somewhat surprised that none of the others besides Reynir seemed aware of it, though none of them looked anything but somber and determined. When Lalli reached the very edge of the massive glyph, he stopped and closed his eyes.

The dearly familiar forms of “Tuuri” and “Onni” standing proudly in the center of the glyph were the first—rather, the only—sight that Lalli saw when his eyes opened. “They” looked back at him, “their” gazes steady and unflinching, even as sudden tears blurred Lalli’s vision.

Lalli shut his eyes, the Icelandic babble Reynir was gargling not penetrating his consciousness. Nothing penetrated his consciousness, until the power writhing within the glyph suddenly flared. Lalli opened his eyes and saw Reynir putting a bandage on Sigrun’s off hand. Even as Lalli watched, Emil used the pukko that had once been Tuuri’s to slice his own palm, letting the blood thus released feed the glyph. Next, Mikkel added his own blood to the mix, and then Reynir did.

“Lalli.” Lalli looked back at “Onni”. “You should all go now.”

Lalli nodded, but his feet refused to move.

“Tuuri” looked at Lalli and said, “Don’t be sad, Lalli. We’ll see each other again someday. You know that.”

A moment later, Lalli had turned his back on the heartrending sight and was moving off towards their new campsite.

*

There was something hypnotic about the campfire, something that crowded out everything else in the world around Lalli; he welcomed this effect, as it kept the thoughts lurking in the back of his mind at bay. He had no idea how long he’d been sitting at the fireside when he was brought out of it by gentle hands trying, all too clumsily, to place a warm jacket over Lalli like a cloak.

Pain, gratitude and anger shot through Lalli at the sensation. He wasn’t sure what he would have said or done to Emil, who only meant to be kind, but he never managed any sort of response because right exactly then was when the glyph erupted, making darkness daylight for a few terrible moments. Even this far away from the explosion, the power of it knocked into Lalli, and he knew no more.

When Lalli opened his eyes again, he was in his dream-space; “Tuuri”, “Onni” and Reynir were all looking back at him silently.

Reynir was the first to speak. “The plan worked.”

“Onni” nodded. “Yes. _It_ is destroyed.” Then “he” turned away. “And now, we must go.”

Lalli wanted to cry out, but “they” were already fading away…


	66. The Vicissitudes of Life (Series 3, Part 22)

“So, how are we planning to get across the old bridge when our (ahem) _illustrious predecessors_ brought it down all that time ago?” Sigurd was confident that his XO had already given this matter some thought, and now was an appropriate enough time for Michaela to present the plan for his review.

“…With the bridging equipment that you helped load into the cargo area?” Michaela had that tone in her voice that made everyone else on the crew uncertain whether or not the big Dane was laughing at what they’d just asked her.

“Wait.” Sigurd frowned. “That was really bridging equipment? I thought the labeling was just for show, so Mia and Lalli wouldn’t go all happy-happy over more ordinance or something.”

“While I wouldn’t put something like that past Torolf, I can assure you that I have personally checked the contents of every container currently in our cargo area against our manifest both before and after we left the Øresund Base, and they are all what they should be.”

Sigurd relaxed very subtly. “So no candle stew.”

Michaela nodded. “Precisely. In any case, I was actually more worried about something other than rebuilding the bridge.”

“And that is?”

“I’m much more concerned about the Death-Shades that we failed to locate at Kastellet,” Michaela ignored Sigurd’s wince at the word “failed”, “as it is not outside the realm of possibility that some or all of them may still be hanging around the bridge area, despite the runes Reynir Árnason put down to keep them from following the First Expedition—or perhaps _because_ those runes worked well enough that the First Expedition never encountered them again.”

“Well, not that bunch anyways. I heard they just barely escaped another bunch in the old hospital in Odense.”

“That _was_ what they put down in their official report.” Michaela and Sigurd exchanged a look reflecting their shared understanding of how accurate official reports tended to be.

“…We’re supposed to go there and exorcise that bunch too, aren’t we?”

“I have not looked at that part of our itinerary as yet, but it would be wise to assume so.”

“Have I mentioned how much I _hate_ cleaning up other people’s messes?”

“Not in the last hour or so. To be fair, this was not a mess anyone made deliberately; the Old Timers had no idea they were creating ghosts with their serum, and the First Expedition used the only tools they possessed to deal with the situation.”

Sigurd smiled wryly. “Just like us, though at least we have a better idea of what we’re facing and how to deal with it.”

“Just so.”

“Well, even if the old Death-Shades _are_ stupid enough to still be hanging around the area, a few basic precautions should be enough to keep them at bay until Tuuli can deal with them; our predecessors noted that these Death-Shades would avoid any light shed by the sun or the moon, so all we need to do is make sure we stay in that light, and that none of the shadows we cast can provide a path for them to reach us by.”

“A masterful tactical analysis.”

“That _is_ my job.”

“And you do it well. Certainly better than anyone else on our team.”

“Mia’s starting to get up to speed there, and Lalli’s no great slouch either.” As ever, Sigurd was unwilling to accept praise at the expense of giving others their due.

“But they’re still not at your level as yet. Anyway, I suppose we can chalk whether we find the Death-Shades or not, as with our grossling encounters, up to the vicissitudes of life.”

“Or _death,_ in their case.” Sigurd grinned. “Anyway, my stomach is telling me it’s suppertime.”

Michaela nodded, wondering why she’d expected Sigurd to have absolutely no clue what ‘vicissitudes’ meant…


	67. A World to Roam (Series 1, Part 23)

Sometimes, even the excitement of what she and her colleagues were doing with the information the team had signaled back wasn’t enough to ease Tuuri’s frustration at her continued infirmity. There was a whole world out there ready and waiting for her to explore it, and she was stuck in the safest place in Sweden with a broken leg!

Even the day when the team finally managed to replicate the failed serum wasn’t exciting enough to take Tuuri’s mind off of roaming the Silent World; fortunately, Onni was there to send the proto-murder-ghost on before it became a problem. Everyone else on the team was ecstatic, as the subject had just died—the Rash had been stopped!

Of course, Tuuri was the only one who believed her brother about there being any sort of specter present at all, though the Finns both took note that this disbelief did not extend to staying by the bedside of the next subject until their death.

“Hi.”

The greeting was so unexpected that it actually knocked Tuuri out of her introspection. She was on her way back to the place she and Onni were renting, though Onni would still be watching The Gnorns, and so her thoughts had gloomily centered on what every hobbling pace with her crutches could not fail to bring to her mind; but something about the soft salutation caught Tuuri’s attention sufficiently to bring her back to the here and now.

The young, small voice came from a young, small girl bundled up in somewhat threadbare garments against the winter’s cold. She made for a rather adorable picture with the storefronts all decorated and fancily lit for Yule (or rather its aftermath) at her back and an expression on her face that combined hesitance and an odd sort of hungry look, but if Tuuri had learned anything from The Gnorns, it was that looks could be terribly deceiving.

“I’m Marta. What’s your name?”

Tuuri looked around for the responsible adult that should be hovering nearby, but saw none. “Where’s your mother?”

The youngling bit her lip, and Tuuri knew what she said next would be a lie. “She’s… in one of the shops getting something for me, but it’s a surprise, so I’m not supposed to go in or peek.”

Not bad for off-the-cuff, but Tuuri knew she couldn’t let it stand. “Where’s your mother?” She let her voice harden just a little, to let the girl know she knew.

“She—she went away,” the little girl—Marta, she said her name was Marta—said reluctantly. “She left me at the orphanage—but she’s coming back! She said she’d be back with enough money that we can have all the nice things we want!”

“Where did she go?” Tuuri asked cautiously.

Caution crept into Marta’s face. “I’m not supposed to tell.”

Tuuri tried to smile reassuringly. “I’m pretty good at keeping secrets.”

A long, long moment passed before Marta finally said, “She went into Silent Denmark, on a special trip with a bunch of other people.”

Tuuri’s lips felt oddly numb, but she managed to ask, “What’s your mother’s name?”

“Momma.” Marta grinned.

“What do other people call her?”

The little face scrunched in thought. “Um… Miira, I think?” Marta shrugged. “It’s something like that. We have weird-sounding names because we’re part Finn.”

“Are you, then?” Tuuri asked in Finnish. “So am I; actually, I’m all Finn, from Finland itself.”

“Our name is Kiianmies,” Marta said in the same tongue. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Tuuri Hotakainen, and I was actually supposed to go on the trip into Silent Denmark, but I broke my leg.”

Marta looked solemn. “When I grow up, I’m going to be a Cleanser, and go on missions to make the Silent World Clean again.”

Tuuri nodded. “But you should see as much of it as you can before you do that; there’s an awful lot of Silent World out there to roam, and not all of it needs to burn to reclaim it.” She cocked her head. “Would you like to come and see the Mora HQ of the mission your mom’s on?”

Marta trotted eagerly after Tuuri as she made her awkward way back to the Västerströms’ place…


	68. What Grossling? (Series 2, Part 23)

Mia looked at Reyndis skeptically. “What are you talking about?” Her weapon was in her hands despite the question; in the Silent World, there was no such thing as too much paranoia.

“The _vættur,_ ” Reyndis expostulated, waving frantically at the spot where she’d seen the minute troll just moments ago. While the team normally spoke Swedish/Norwegian/Danish amongst themselves, Reyndis’ upset had caused her to slip back into her native Icelandic.

“Lalli?” The other Cleanser’s head popped up at Mia’s call. “Are there any vättes hanging around here?”

“No.”

Mia relaxed subtly. “See? Lalli may not be a full-fledged mage,” _anymore,_ she added silently, “like you and Tuuli are, but she’s certainly got enough juice to tell when there’s a grossling anywhere nearby.”

“Maybe it’s a weird spirit trying to play tricks on you,” Lalli offered. “I can’t usually see those, but I’ve been on their bad side before; it’s not fun.”

Mia grimaced and nodded; this epic speech (for Lalli) had brought back a few unpleasant memories of her own. “That’s probably it, Reyndis,” she agreed. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing any of us except maybe you or Tuuli can do about it.” She cuffed the Icelander’s arm playfully. “Try not to let it get to you, huh?”

*

“What?” Michaela shifted her feet as she turned from her position over the steaming cooking pot, her thick boots crushing the tiny vermin beast with a sickening _crunch._ “What grossling, Reyndis?”

Reyndis opened her mouth, then thought better of it. “Never mind; just be sure to wipe your feet before you get in the vehicle.”

Lalli had, of course, taken advantage of Michaela’s distraction to toss a squirrel into the pot, but at least she’d had the courtesy to skin and clean it beforehand.

*

“You know, Reyndis, this isn’t the best time to start going stir-crazy.”

For once, Sigurd was completely calm and collected when remonstrating with Reyndis; in fact, he was rather more sympathetic than his usual air of impatience would have led one to believe possible.

“I know this whole thing has been really rough on you, but we’re almost at the pick-up point and out of this place, and with everything done that we were supposed to get done, so if you can just keep it together for a few more days, we’ll be home free.” Sigurd grinned. “When we’re on the ship, you can go as stark raving mad as you want and they’ll take care of you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you know the ship’s mage!”

“You say that like it’s a _good_ thing,” Reyndis muttered, and Sigurd laughed for the first time since Odense.

*

Tuuli frowned, his patience finally at an end. “Look, Reyndis…”

“No, _you_ look!” Reyndis interrupted, pointing at the tiny round troll sitting just behind Tuuli.

Tuuli blinked at this uncharacteristic assertiveness on Reyndis’ part, then closed his eyes. When they opened, they glowed blue. “I’m looking.” The troll seemed to glow the same shade of blue that Tuuli’s eyes were for a moment, then Tuuli sang something at it and it vanished.

Reyndis let out a sigh of relief.

“How long has that thing been bothering you?” Tuuli’s voice had lost the angry edge it had held a moment ago.

Reyndis shrugged. “A few days; maybe a week. Mostly I’ve been trying to ignore it.”

Tuuli closed his eyes again. “Why were you trying to ignore it?”

“Well, Mia and Lalli thought it was some kind of trickster spirit, and I don’t know anything about dealing with those, so I tried concentrating on keeping anything worse away.”

Tuuli was losing his patience again. “Why didn’t you just ask _me_ then?”

“I kinda… forgot.”

Tuuli went over to the nearest wall and started softly hitting his head against it, which drew Mia and Lalli into the bunk area. Before the Cleanser duo could ask anything, though, a cry rang out from outside.

_“THE BOAT’S HERE! TUULI, GET THAT RUST-BUCKET IN GEAR AND ABOARD BEFORE THEY BAIL ON US!”_

And that was how the Second Silent World Expedition came to its successful conclusion on one fine morning in the early Spring of the Year 226.

The _Third_ Silent World Expedition, on the other hand…


	69. The Worth of a Worm (Series 3, Part 23)

“The answer is still no.”

“I was just hoping that you might have reconsidered while you were laid up and all, since you had so much time to think it over.”

“The answer is still no.” This time, Emil took the time and care to enunciate each word as clearly as he could, as though the Old Man were hard of hearing or slow to understand, though Emil knew that neither was in fact the case. “Now go away.” He rolled over, turning his back to the Old Man in a calculated insult.

The smooth, oily voice that reminded Emil so much of his Uncle T was unruffled; in fact, Emil thought he heard a faint hint of amusement there. “You just think it over some more and we’ll have a good, long palaver about it next time.” And the Old Man was gone.

Emil flopped back onto his back, breathing out a long sigh of relief. He hadn’t realized until that moment that he’d been holding his breath after he’d issued his peremptory demand, part of him fearing that the Old Man would ignore it… and part of him hoping that the Old Man would ignore it.

The pain hit Emil a moment later, lightning bolts of agony shooting down his spine; to sweeten the deal, the Old Man tended to hold the pain at bay while presenting his spiel, but it always came rushing back once Emil had refused and the Old Man had left. Stick and Carrot; Pain and Relief; these were the Old Man’s weapons, and he wielded them with a master’s touch.

Another jolt ran through Emil and lingered. Tonight was going to be bad; the nights he refused the Old Man were always the worst.

Some time later—pain tended to warp your perceptions of how long anything was—Emil became aware of someone else in the room. When he finally managed to get himself together enough to look and see who it might be, he found that it was Lalli. Before Emil could gather the energy to say something, though, Lalli said just one word: “Perkele.”

“Huh?” Emil wished he could have said something more thoughtful and measured, but he simply couldn’t comprehend what his friend was trying to convey with that cryptic utterance.

Lalli sat lightly on the edge of Emil’s bed. “That’s what my grandma used to call the Old Man: Perkele. She was always warning me about falling into his clutches if I wasn’t careful.” Lalli grimaced. “She said she’d had personal experience on how one-sided his deals always were.”

“Run home, Lalli,” Emil said to his friend. “I may not have taken the Old Man’s deal tonight, but he’ll be back, over and over again, until he has his way. If he has to, he’ll kill you and anyone else who thwarts him, so run while you can.”

“You’ve been too good a friend to me for me to do that.” Lalli’s face was utterly solemn.

“I’m a worm” Emil said miserably. “Not worth the powder to blow me to joining the Old Man.”

“Even worms have their worth,” Lalli argued. “They go through the soil and renew it so the crops can grow; no farmer underestimates the worth of a worm, except at his own peril.” He stood. “I won’t abandon you, whether or not you think you’re worth it. Get that through your thick head, Emil Västerström: even when you don’t see me, I’m there with you.”

Between one blink and the next, Lalli was gone. Emil wasn’t sure his friend had ever really been in the room, but he knew that Lalli would always be there when he needed him.

*

Emil (and Lalli) stayed on with Reynir and Tuuri as just another hand, never complaining, always working as best he could; but he never killed anything again, unless it was a weed that needed to be pulled. Every so often, the Old Man would show up, and Emil would refuse him all over again.

Every time Emil looked too deep into a fire, he could see the Old Man laughing.

Lalli was gone by the time Reynir and Tuuri’s grandson took over the spread, but Emil was still limping on, though slower every year. He was the oldest of the hands, and they all tended to help him out when they could get away with it.

One night, the Old Man came for the last time, but Lalli helped Emil see him off. The other hands found Emil in his bunk come morning, a small smile on his weathered face…


	70. A Xylophone and a Zither (Series 1, Part 24)

Apparently, the thieves and robbers who infested the big, dark, scary forest were all also avid musicians, because when they’d run afoul of the Three Bear Warriors who were their sworn enemies, Sigrun, the fiercest Bear Warrior ever ever ever, had pursued them all the way back to their camp and found a veritable dragon’s hoard of musical instruments. Lalli, their newly acquired feline Cub Scout, had suggested that the Bear Warriors and their friend “Goldilocks” Emil Västerström might try starting their own band as a sideline, but Mikkel, the general dogs-body of the trio, had informed him that jazz wouldn’t be invented for another few centuries, and that Bremen was too far away anyways, so that idea was set aside for the moment.

The unlikely foursome finally remembered that they had been on their way to bring some Very Important and Valuable Items back to Trond the Crooked Man that Old Man Olsen, a very unpleasant man who had died some years before, had borrowed and never returned from Captain Ása Hardardóttir’s father, Hörður the Hoarder, so the Bear Warriors and Emil dropped off the big iron pot in which they’d stashed the Very Important and Valuable Items at Trond the Crooked Man’s crooked home just outside the big, dark, scary forest, though they couldn’t hang around to listen to any of his crooked tales.

Most of the instruments had easily found their owners from the local villages, but when the dust from the reclaiming frenzy settled, two instruments remained: a xylophone that had been partly dismantled (but which had all of its pieces), and a zither with most of its strings intact.

Now, a zither was close enough to a kantele that Lalli, a Finn forest cat, worked it out fairly easily; and Emil had been training on the glockenspiel before he’d been sent to live with his uncle and aunt, so he was working the xylophone pretty well shortly. Their impromptu concert, held on the front lawn of the house that used to be Old Man Olsen’s, drew a whole crowd out to hear; but more importantly it drew out the current owner of the house, Reynir Árnason, and the pair of ghosts who liked hanging around him, “Onni” and “Tuuri”.

Emil didn’t particularly like ghosts of any sort, but he was a very well-mannered boy (when he remembered to be), so he had got on “Onni” and “Tuuri’s” good side by being polite to “them”, just as he had the Bear Warriors in the first place. When “they” asked to sing along, Emil looked at Lalli, who nodded, and Emil told “them” it was okay, and this turned out to be a very good idea, because “Onni” was a very fine base and “Tuuri” a sweet alto.

Mikkel and Sigrun still wanted no part of the musical ensemble that was coalescing, but they weren’t opposed to Lalli going and having fun with Emil every so often. So it was that the concerts became a more or less monthly occurrence, always on Reynir’s front lawn. Emil was just getting used to hanging around with the ghosts when…


	71. Xenophon Reincarnate (Series 2, Part 24)

_“Excess of victory never yet caused any conqueror one pang of remorse.”_

“May I talk with _anybody else,_ please?”

Mikkel never got tired of hearing that, even through all the innumerable variations that he had heard: it meant victory, and he had long since learned to savor every little (or large) victory he could wrest from the vapid, fatuous masses he had to deal with on a regular basis; such was his only compensation from the petty cruelties and stupidities they forced him to endure on a near-constant basis.

At first, Mikkel had expected that a new workplace, occupation or employer might prove the exception to the idiocracy in which he had been trapped for all of his life; that hope had long since faded by now, replaced with resignation over the anticipated onslaught of foolishness that always eventuated. So now Mikkel welcomed every evidence that he grated on his more pathologically microcephalic colleagues or employers as much as they grated on him.

Of course, Mikkel’s current teammates grated on him far less than most, so that was a plus. Given that, he had been careful not to unduly antagonize the others, though it appeared his first little prank had left a lasting impression on Emil. Oh, well.

*

_“There was something in me that would not rest until I fulfilled a grand destiny.”_   
_“Perhaps their attacks on my character meant that the hour was ripe for my career to begin in earnest.”_

As soon as he was certain that the door was securely closed, Mikkel strode briskly from the vehicle, assured in his determination to sortie to Kastellet and bring to light the answers all his instincts told him awaited him there. Once he had the solution in hand, Sigrun would be forced to admit that she had unfairly maligned both his abilities and his acumen in asserting that the sortie should be made.

Quite obviously, Mikkel was the only person on the team suited to make this sortie, as only he had the right combination of immunity to enable him to go without fear, knowledge to enable him to find what he sought, and deductive ability to interpret what he might find. Though some of these qualities were shared (to a sadly limited extent) by some of his teammates, none of them combined these prerequisites in one person as he did. Success would be his vindication.

*

_“The sweetest sound is praise.”_

“…and the fact that you can carry as much as three random, boring dudes, I like that about you.”

It seemed Sigrun had given some thought to what enconia she might truthfully give Mikkel, which was actually quite considerate of her; Mikkel only wished she didn’t make it sound like she was scraping the bottom of the barrel for such praise. He would forbear mentioning this minor discontent, of course, and try not to dwell upon it aside from this one acknowledgement: ingratitude for efforts made on one’s behalf was the easiest way to discourage reoccurrence of such effort.

“So what I’m saying is: you’re really good at muscles, which is great.”

Mikkel smiled and replied, “I’m flattered.” And he was, despite any earlier eye-rolling. Perhaps Sigrun could have worded her earlier statements better, but the summation was more than adequate to her cause.

Mikkel was of the opinion that one should dwell on the sweeter things in life, as they tended to be the most ephemeral…


	72. The X-Y-Z Problem (Series 3, Part 24)

_The wizened little detective moved down the line of suspects at a slow and measured pace. The various people in the line fidgeted as he approached, only relaxing when he had passed them. There was only one of them who seemed completely at his ease throughout the ordeal: the murderer._

Throughout all the tumultuous events since he had awoken with a sack on his head, Reynir had managed to keep hold of something that he’d found by his feet in those stables: one of the thriller novels his mother had written long ago.

Reynir’s mother, Sigriður Jónsdóttir, had borne five children, and with each pregnancy, she had been confined to bed for a longer or shorter period in the third trimester. For such a normally active woman as Sigriður, the boredom of this confinement was excruciating; so when her mother-in-law Hildur, herself a well-known writer of steamy romances, had suggested that Sigriður try her own hand at writing something, Sigriður had latched onto the notion like a drowning woman clutching a floatation device.

Thus the wizened little detective came into being; the book Reynir had was the eighth of his adventures, written while Reynir himself was in utero. This seeming coincidence gave Reynir a warm, fuzzy feeling, like his mother was in some way looking out for him from afar.

Through two balloon rides and a vast trek underground, Reynir had carried the book; one might expect that he’d know every page and every word on every page by heart, but he had only had brief snatches in which to pore over the book, so only now was he approaching the book’s climactic passages.

The second balloon ride had perforce been shorter than the first, as the six of them had barely had time to climb in before their beloved island had exploded, damaging their balloon so that it had almost failed them. They’d managed to eke out just enough flight time from it to reach a nearby and greatly inferior island, and were resting briefly before jumping back to work. Fortunately, the island was just as grossling-free as the other had been.

The real question that they were faced with which none of them wanted to say out loud was how they were going to get home—which now seemed more like whether they were going to get home at all than it had at any point in their various adventures. The island had essentially nothing that they could use to even try to get home, and very little that they could use to survive at all.

Fortunately for them, there was a mildly dilapidated cabin that was a relic of the Old Times but would shelter all of them, though the electrical systems were long since defunct.

_“You used the Old Time telephone system to pretend you were elsewhere when you were really busy murdering your victim, but what you don’t realize is that phone calls are still tracked and recorded—we can prove whence the call you made originated!”_

Reynir sat up. There was a telephone on the desk not five feet from the bed upon which he was lounging, and in a second, his hand was on the receiver. Reynir paused. It couldn’t be _that_ easy, could it? Swallowing hard, Reynir put the receiver to his ear…

…And heard a dial tone.

*

Staying alive until the Icelandic Navy sent one of their ships to rescue them was physically trying, but contact with their loved ones gave them just the boost in spirits that they needed to tough it out.

By the time they reached Reykjavik, their loved ones had had time to get there as well; the dockside reunion must have been quite a sight for any uninformed spectators…


	73. A Yen for a Yen (Series 1, Part 25)

Tuuri watched Reyinr approach while pretending she was unaware of him. Reynir was being uncharacteristically hesitant, and Tuuri wasn’t going to do anything to encourage that hesitance.

Tuuri was driving the vehicle at its customary slow crawl so that the horses tied to the rear bumper could keep up with ease down the road to Keuruu; aside from Reynir, the others were all napping in the back, waiting for the incipient contact Lalli had told them would be minutes away now.

“Turi?” Reynir swallowed hard before he could continue. “Um… What were you planning to do when we get to Keuruu?”

Tuuri paused for a moment before replying, “Well, it’s my home, so… nothing special, really. I mean, we were all down in Mikkeli on that mission, but we all have our own homes we need to go back to… don’t we? Unless… unless some of us might want to stay together?”

A blast of light burst through the windshield before Tuuri could reply. They had finally reached the first line of outposts protecting Keuruu.

*

The six of them went into individual isolation cells for their mandatory quarantine; they were not informed of what was done with the horses. Normally, that would have been that, but because the six of them were, as Reynir put it later, cursed with an attraction for all the worst troubles that could find them, on the day before they were to have been released there was a sudden influx of people who needed to be quarantined, which meant that the four immunes were squashed together in one cell (let’s face it—that’s what they were at that point), and the two non-immunes were put in another.

It was only supposed to be for a day, but the facility was so overwhelmed that it lasted almost another week; Mikkel pointed out that they were lucky that the staff had kept feeding them, considering how great the chaos actually was out there.

*

The two cells had a register through which they could communicate; none of them knew how it was that they could talk that way without risk of cross-contamination, but they accepted it as fact nonetheless. This register was firmly shut, as the two non-immunes were in the midst of a discussion that they felt should remain private to them.

“I’d like us to stay together after all of this is finally over.”

There were a few moments of silence after this declaration.

“Do you really want me in particular, or do you just want someone to be with you and anyone will do?”

Tuuri grabbed Reynir’s cheeks and pulled his head to hers until their foreheads touched, forcing him to look her directly in the eyes. “I want to see what we can be together in the real world, instead of some crazy chase back to civilization.”

*

“It took you long enough,” Onni grumbled as the guards signaled him to accompany them to the quarantine cells.

When the guards finally opened the cell where they’d put the two non-immunes, they found Reynir and Tuuri busily making out.


	74. Youth (Series 2, Part 25)

Mikkel Madsen, author of “Mars on a C-Note a Day”, “Love and the Modern AI”, “Pearl-Blossoms Across the Sky (and Other Stories)”, and many more such hard sci-fi tales, ducked as the sword whizzed past his head, wondering why he’d ever agreed to this. A moment later, his opponent had been knocked flat on his back by a redheaded fury: Sigrun Eide, Norse Cinema’s reigning Queen of the Troll Hunters.

Mikkel winced as Sigrun bellowed in triumph before coming to a startling realization: he was actually enjoying himself. This realization was disturbing on a number of levels, but he had other things on which he ought to be concentrating, so he put it from his mind for the moment.

The leather scale armor Mikkel was wearing was well-balanced but still chafed in various places and was getting rather a bit too warm overall. Even so, Mikkel was of the opinion that he was still doing fairly well, considering his inexperience at this type of martial art.

Sigrun’s parents had insisted on Mikkel’s attendance at and participation in these games in Dalsnes; Mikkel had no idea why, but since their insistence took the form of a man even more massive than Mikkel and half his age, Mikkel had acquiesced. Sigrun had met his plane and introduced him to her young pyromaniac friend Emil Västerström, who hadn’t understood a word of Mikkel’s greeting. Emil had introduced them to his friend Lalli Hotakainen, Lalli’s cousin Tuuri Hotakainen, and Tuuri’s light-o’-love Reynir Árnason. Sigrun, far from discouraging this chain of friends leeching off of her hospitality, had been quite enthusiastic about their number; Mikkel only found out why when the aides came to kit him out with the armor.

The annual games included a number of team fights in period arms and armor; the whole group had been volunteered for one such. Sigrun, Mikkel, Emil, Lalli, Tuuri and Reynir were all fighting on one side of the brawl, with an equal number of Sigrun’s parents’ flunkies (all nearly as large as the one who’d summoned Mikkel) as their opponents. Sigrun had immediately taken charge of her group (which everyone thought was a good idea), and had designated Emil, of all people, as her “right-hand viking” (which even Emil thought was a mistake).

The six of them had promptly though informally been split into two groups: Mikkel, Tuuri and Reynir formed the “we can barely defend ourselves” group; while Sigrun, Lalli and (to his own amazement) Emil formed the “don’t worry, we’ll protect you and win this anyway” group.

Fortunately, Mikkel’s leg wound had been healed for quite some time, or this battle would have been even more of an ordeal than it was proving to be. While he, Tuuri and Reynir were indeed only barely holding their own, the three of them were still holding their own, which was better than the alternative at hand.

Mikkel glanced over at the Grand Pavilion, where Sigrun’s parents were seated in seeming unconcern (as far as he could tell from this distance) and regal splendor on the High Dais (just above the Middle Dais, which was just above the Low Dais, which was just above the Battling Pitch). He shifted his weapon and shield as his ire at the situation they’d forced upon him grew. He was an author of hard science fiction, not some hack writer scribbling out pseudo-historical claptrap!

There were only two of their opponents still on their feet; while Tuuri and Reynir were watching in awe as Sigrun, Lalli and Emil surrounded their remaining foes, Mikkel decided to take matters into his own hands.

The one thing Mikkel hadn’t counted on in his spur-of-the-moment plan was that he was going to try to go up against Sigrun’s parents; had he given it more consideration, he would have realized that this could only end badly. In the event, they actually allowed Mikkel to make his way up to the High Dais before Sigrun’s parents took him on personally… for all of the five seconds it took them to take him down.

When Mikkel opened his eyes, his head was throbbing horribly and Sigrun was grinning down at him; her grin was particularly insane, which made Mikkel’s head throb even worse than it was already. Her words did nothing to dispel the throbbing: “I knew there was a reason I like you.” She laughed at his expression. “Purely platonically, Big Guy, though if I liked you the other way, my parents would be all for it after your gutsy try at them.”

Mikkel had absolutely no idea what he reply he managed to make…


	75. The Yowling (Series 3, Part 25)

Well, so Lalli the feline Cub Scout couldn’t sing; that didn’t matter, as neither could “Goldilocks” Emil. The fact that the two of them could play their instruments pleasantly well together was good enough.

Unfortunately, while Emil was inclined to let Lalli yowl his heart out if he so desired, Sigrun, the fiercest Bear Warrior ever ever ever, was decidedly not; or at least, not around her, and Mikkel quite agreed.

This was why Emil and Lalli were in a distant part of the big, dark, scary forest one fine summer day with their instruments. The ghosts who usually sang along with their playing, “Onni” and “Tuuri”, couldn’t come this deep into the big, dark, scary forest, or “they” might offend the local ghost wolves and bears and Bear Warriors, so it was just Emil and Lalli.

They had just started to get a good tune going when they were interrupted by a weird, glowing horse ghost with eight legs. The ghost leapt up on a nearby stump and said, 

“Boys, let me tell you what,  
“I’ll bet you didn’t know,  
“But I’m a zither player too,  
“And if you’d care  
“To take a dare,  
“I’ll make a bet with you…”

It was at this point that Emil pointed out that both places named Georgia were quite some ways away; that the ghost might have better luck with a fiddler rather than a zitherist; and that the ghost should probably be on guard against someone with a sack that might have been obtained from Trond the Crooked Man. Then Emil pulled a small burlap sack from his belt and waved it suggestively, whereupon the ghost decided to take “himself” elsewhere.

Lalli repaid the favor a few minutes later when a wandering huntsman mistook Emil for his quarry, though Emil had sparkling gold hair rather than thick raven tresses. Apparently, the huntsman had been going blind for some time with cataracts. Lalli being a cat knew how to alleviate this problem, so the huntsman left with thanks and a promise to cut them free if they ever found themselves in a wolf’s belly.

“Do you think we should go to some other part of the big, dark, scary forest?” Emil asked Lalli. “It’s getting awfully crowded around here.”

Lalli quietly considered the matter for a while. “Maybe we should go visit my grandmother.”

“Only if we can get the huntsman to stick around,” Emil said firmly. “We may need to take him up on his offer.”

Lalli admitted that elderly grandmothers had a strange habit of being eaten by wolves just as their grandchildren were coming to call, and Emil wondered why uncles couldn’t pick up the habit, as his Uncle Torbjörn had threatened to withhold the pease porridge again if Emil didn’t bring back something nice from his friends.

“That’s why I don’t invite you over,” Emil apologized.

“I might be of assistance with that, if you can help me in exchange,” a nearby frog croaked. “This stump leads to the cave of the Gobbler King. He owes me a favor, so if you ask, he’ll give you something to help.”

“How shall we aid you in return?” Emil asked.

The frog shuddered. “Never sing in this part of the big, dark, scary forest again.”

Lalli and Emil looked at each other and shrugged. In another moment, they had gone into the stump and down a long passageway that led to a sumptuous throne room, where the Gobbler King sat in state. After they’d explained the situation to him, he nodded to one of his flunkies, who presented them with a folding table. “Whenever this table is set up, a magical and unending feast will fill it.”

“Thank you,” Emil said politely, and took the table in his arms.

Emil presented his aunt and uncle with the table, but since Reynir had invited him and the Three Bear Warriors to dine at the house that used to be Old Man Olsen’s, Emil did not wait for them to try the table.

The Gobbler King and the frog had deceived Emil: once opened, the table would force anyone nearby to eat from its feast until their stomachs burst, at which point it would fold itself back up. When Emil returned to his uncle and aunt that evening, he found a tragic scene.

The frog was visiting the Gobbler King when Emil and the Three Bear Warriors came with the table, which saved them some time. The Gobbler King had a magic sword, but before he could finish saying, “All heads off but mine!”, Sigrun had lopped his head off.

Despite successfully avenging his family, Emil was still sad, for he had no idea how to live on his own. The answer came from “Tuuri”, who pressed Reynir to invite Emil to live with him. Emil agreed, on the condition that he could still go and visit the Three Bear Warriors from time to time; and so he, Reynir and the ghosts all got along very well for the rest of their days.


	76. A Zap in the Right Place (Series 1, Part 26)

“Only now, at the end, do you understand.” Another foul course of purple lightning sprang from the vile Sorcerer’s gnarled fingers, identical to that which had slain the Evil Tyrant when his failure to rout the Six Sojourners had become apparent. The dire bolts leapt at the Sojourners…

…Only to bend around and concentrate upon the head of the Blue Wizard’s outstretched staff. “There is, indeed, much that you have made plain to us,” the Blue Wizard stated calmly, “but it is not our end that is nigh: it is yours.” And Lalli equally calmly shot the arrow he had readied into the Sorcerer’s belly.

*

They stayed on at the village for almost a week, which nearly ran the villagers out of food, though the Blue Wizard gave them a mysterious gift “from the vaults of Laurelindórenan, the Elven Valley of Singing Gold in the Far West”, which statement caused Reynir Half-Elven to shoot a brief but astonished glance at the Blue Wizard.

Leave they did, though each of them had only the vaguest of destinations in mind. For the moment, this mattered very little, as the way to anywhere they were desirous of going led back along the route they had taken to get to the village: they had followed the dawn here; now they must follow the setting sun.

The dragons and the magicians and all the other trials and travails of the journey East declined to hinder them as they made their way back West, so their journey went faster than they’d thought possible. All too soon, they had reached the spot where the Dwarven caravan had come to grief and Reynir Half-Elven had joined them.

And now, the decisions each of them had been putting off could be put off no longer. Each secretly wanted to remain with the others wherever that might lead them, though each stated that their duty was to return to their homelands, if they could.

Finally, the Blue Wizard broke into their councils. “Enough of this. Lalli, would the Royal Sword turn away any who wished to serve him, especially if you pledged for their valor?”

“Of course not,” Lalli said in surprise.

“Of course not.” The Blue Wizard clasped his hands behind him. “There is a minor village along the Great East Road near the Shire and within the realm of Arthedain, a village where Men, Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits are known to mingle; it is called Bree by those who people it. This area would welcome any who wish to settle there, particularly those who serve the Royal Sword.”

The Blue Wizard paused. No one spoke, though all were watching him intently.

“Lalli and Tuuri Pesky-Door; Mikkel Foundling Son of Man; Sigrun of the Haladin Guard; Emil Dúnduin of Gondor; and Reynir Half-Elven: will you accept a charge that will bind you for the rest of your lives, the defense of the North against the rapacity and depredations of Angmar?”

Fear hit each heart, but sudden joy pushed it aside. Here was what each of them secretly wanted but had feared to ask for, laid before them as a charge—but also as a gift.

The Blue Wizard smirked as each of the Six Sojourners silently nodded in turn…


	77. Zen and the Art of Cat-Tank Maintenance (Series 2, Part 26)

Take off the bolts.

Open the housing.

Check the gasket.

Check the rotor.

Check the coils.

Check the brushes.

Check the housing.

Shut the housing.

Put the bolts back on.

Wipe the sweat out of your eyes.

Trace the wires back from point to point, looking for breaks.

Check the battery.

Try the engine again.

Repeat as needed until the engine starts.

The drearily repetitive nature of what Tuuri was trying to do ironically helped clear her mind of all the fears and worries that her… condition… naturally gave rise to as the days went on, even in such a relentlessly optimistic mind as hers. Tuuri found her various other considerations all subsumed by the necessity to concentrate on what she was doing.

Take off the bolts.

Open the housing.

Check the gasket.

Check the rotor…

It never seemed to end, though Tuuri was sure she’d solved every problem there was to find; thus, when giving Sigrun a progress report, she said, “I’m almost finished, I swear! I just have to—” a long pause “…get it to…” another long pause “…start?”

After a few rumblings from Mikkel, Tuuri went back to work.

Shut the housing.

Put the bolts back on.

Wipe the sweat out of your eyes.

Trace the wires back from point to point, looking for breaks.

Check the battery.

Try the engine again.

Tuuri was working by sheer rote now, her mind numb to all else. Had she been able to muse on anything, she might have thought to compare her mental state with that of her comatose brother, or she might not, but certainly she had nothing to spare for such contemplations when the stupid engine just wouldn’t start and there was no reason why it shouldn’t!

There was a lot of weather going on around Tuuri as she worked on the engine, but the hood, crumpled though it may be, protected her from most of it. The hood thus served as a good analogy for the vehicle as a whole: whatever its failures in aesthetics, the vehicle provided them with adequate shelter from the world around them, even if it got stuck a few times. Tuuri grunted as she pulled one last connection back into place.

Without warning, the engine came to life, hesitantly at first, but soon after it was roaring like it had never been stalled or silent at all. For a moment, Tuuri was dumbfounded; then she said, “I did it!” And she had, of course. “I’m… I’m… **_so amazing!_** ”

Tuuri had every right to crow: this was her doing entirely, and the culmination of so much time and effort spent that the details of it all ran together from the first time she’d popped the hood open to this moment of triumph. Therefore, Tuuri was going to agree with Sigrun that the engine’s roar was her new favorite sound and ignore what Emil said about the roar’s quality or lack thereof.

The vehicle would be fine, just as Tuuri herself would be. They were both going to chug on until they reached their final stop…


	78. The Zipper (Series 3, Part 26)

Miira Kiianmies, widow of Elias, mother of Marta, was dead as the proverbial doornail; the sad thing was how few people regretted this fact except insofar as it hurt Marta. Even Reynir, whose life she had (almost certainly unintentionally) saved through her death, was only mildly sorry that the abrasive woman was gone from amongst them.

The irony of it all was that it could all be traced back to a stuck zipper.

*

The kitten was dancing across the wooden boards that made up the floor of the sleeping compartment, her high-pitched mewls audible even above the sounds of the battle raging outside, but Miira ignored the frantic feline because she was fiddling with the zipper of her coat, which was stuck halfway.

Everyone who has dealt with stuck zippers knows the halfway point to be the worst possible place for it to happen: if it sticks lower down, you can treat it like it’s open; if it sticks higher up, you can treat it like it’s closed. Halfway, however, works against either of these expedients, which was why Miira was ignoring everything else in her efforts to shift the recalcitrant bit of metal either up or down, but it just wouldn’t give over to her.

So instead of prudently sitting still and quiet beside Reynir on the lower bunk, Miira was standing and fiddling with her zipper not a foot from where the troll burst through the floor. The sizeable splinters they later found piercing the back of her head probably killed her instantly, but just her presence so close to the troll caused it to concentrate on her long enough for Lalli to come in and kill it before it could go after Reynir as well.

*

Before the battle, it had been nearly a week since anyone on the team had spoken to Miira, which she actually counted a blessing. All of them (the ones who understood Swedish, anyway) had been shocked by the vile, foul and vicious things Miira had told Marta over the radio—Marta, her daughter, who was barely six years old! After that, Miira began to live out the true meaning of the word “pariah”.

Fortunately, Lalli had been getting more and more proficient in his basic Swedish, even though Finnish continued to elude the others.

*

Miira’s death crystallized something for Tuuri: she no longer wanted to run right out into the Silent World, and the reason was a six year old bundle of mischief who was determined to join the Cleansers and had just been orphaned. Now, Tuuri was not about to admit this to Onni yet, as she knew her brother would take at least a year to get the “I told you so” out of his system. No, she would play this cool for a while, at least around him.

The three of them had already found their own place, as neither Hotakainen could abide sending Marta back to the orphanage where Miira had dumped her, so that had already been settled. The only thing left in the wake of Miira’s death was going through the formal adoption process, which proved to be a fairly streamlined affair.

Sorting out Onni’s affairs in Keuruu was another matter…


End file.
